Cardinal Porras detained, barred from leaving Venezuela

"His passport was annulled on the spot."

Cardinal Baltazar Porras, one of the staunchest clerical critics of the Venezuelan regime, was briefly detained by police and had his passport annulled after he tried to board a flight on Dec. 10.

The cardinal was informed that he has been banned from leaving the country.

Cardinal Baltazar Porras. ZUMA Press, Inc. / Alamy Stock Photo

Sources close to the cardinal told The Pillar that Porras, the archbishop emeritus of Caracas, went to the Simón Bolívar International Airport near Caracas on Wednesday to board a flight to Madrid. He was expected to take part in a ceremony at which he would be appointed Protector of the Military and Hospitaller Order of Saint Lazarus of Jerusalem.

Pressure and threats against Porras have increased since October, when he called the situation in Venezuela “morally unacceptable” during a conference in Rome ahead of the canonization of the first two Venezuelan saints. Rumors about his possible arrest had circulated on social media in recent months, and he was prevented by Venezuelan authorities from boarding a flight within the country in late October.

“Earlier today, police at the airport detained him for two hours, threatened him, and even brought the drug detection dogs to check him,” a source close to Porras told The Pillar.

“They annulled his Venezuelan passport, and didn’t allow him to board the flight despite the fact that he also has a Vatican passport. Authorities say you have to leave the country with a Venezuelan passport if you’re a Venezuelan national with a second nationality, but his passport was annulled on the spot, so he couldn’t leave,” the source added.

The cardinal’s phone was taken away during the two-hour detention and he was not allowed to alert anyone of the situation, sources said. Venezuelan authorities verbally notified Porras that he was formally banned from leaving the country until further notice.

In a statement sent out to Venezuelan bishops and obtained by The Pillar, Porras said that a Venezuelan official informed him in the airport that he appeared as “deceased” in the passport system, and then was told that there were “problems” with his passport.

The cardinal said a member of the Venezuelan military informed him that he was not allowed to travel and refused to give him his passport back.

Porras said that he was forced to sign a document saying that he banned from traveling due to “non-compliance with travel regulations” and was threatened with arrest after asking to take a picture of the document.

After being detained for over two hours, Venezuelan authorities left 81-year-old Porras in the baggage claim area of the airport, he said.

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Tensions between the Church and government have risen since the canonization of the first two Venezuelan saints, Saint José Gregorio Hernández and Saint Carmen Rendiles, on Oct. 19.

A few days before the canonization, the Venezuelan bishops published a pastoral letter in which they called for the release of the more than 800 political prisoners in the country.

And in an Oct. 17 event in Rome commemorating the canonizations, Cardinal Porras said that the situation in Venezuela was “morally unacceptable [including] the growth of poverty, militarization as a form of government to incite violence, corruption, and lack of autonomy of public powers, and the disrespect of the people’s will.”

Tensions continued throughout the canonization weekend, with the Venezuelan government making a clear bid to score political points by claiming support in the Vatican and even from Pope Leo himself.

When that plan failed to produce the desired optics, the government shifted to a more hostile approach toward the Church.

Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro accused Cardinal Baltazar Porras, Archbishop Emeritus of Caracas, in an Oct. 21 speech of “conspiring” to derail Hernández’s canonization. Maduro claimed that Pope Francis didn’t know who Hernández was until he introduced the saint’s story to him.

A Mass of Thanksgiving for the canonizations in Caracas a week after the canonizations, expected to draw more than 50,000 participants, was cancelled a few days before it was supposed to take place.

An official statement from the Archdiocese of Caracas said the cancellation was due to lack of space and security reasons. But sources close to the situation told The Pillar that the Mass was cancelled because the Venezuelan regime was planning to send thousands of government supporters to turn the Mass into a rally for President Nicolás Maduro.

On Oct. 26, Porras complained on social media that he had been barred from travelling to Isnotú, the hometown of Saint José Gregorio Hernández, where he had been scheduled to celebrate Mass for the new saint’s feast day.

Porras said Venezuelan authorities prevented him from boarding his flight from Caracas to the city of Valera, near Isnotú. When he boarded a private flight, he said, the pilot was forced to land in a different city because authorities said Valera’s airport was closed due to poor weather conditions.

Porras said he decided to continue the last leg of the trip by land, but members of the armed forces prevented him from doing so, forcing him instead to return to Caracas.

The Vatican was unusually direct in its comments on the regime in the days following the canonization.

In an Oct. 20 thanksgiving Mass for the canonization of the first two Venezuelan saints, Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin offered one of the most scathing criticisms of the Venezuelan regime by a Vatican official in recent times, with the government’s official delegation sitting in the front row.

Parolin called upon the government to “listen to the words of the Lord, who calls you to open unjust prisons, to break the chains of oppression, to set the oppressed free, to break all chains.”

Updated December 10, 12:49 pm EST with Porras’ statement.