Education will be a battleground between the Church and the Government of President Hugo Chávez this year, according to Cardinal Jorge Urosa Savino, Archbishop of Caracas. He predicted that "attempts to exclude religion from Venezuelan schools will cause completely unnecessary conflicts, and will disturb the peace of the country".

An educational reform bill will come before Congress - in which opponents of the left-wing President Chávez have no representatives at all - later this month. Opponents claim that the Government intends to introduce a curriculum influenced by its socialist ideology, to the exclusion of other points of view, and that the Church's traditionally prominent role in education will be challenged and diminished. "The Church will strive to convince the Government that it has no right to a monopoly on education," the cardinal said.

Fears that the re-election of Mr Chávez last month, with a large majority, would be followed by increasing intolerance of opposition views were given substance last week when Mr Chávez told one of the country's oldest private television channels, RCTV, that its licence would not be renewed when it runs out later this year. He accuses RCTV of supporting US-inspired conspiracies to overthrow his Government, and he has made clear his impatience with those who reject his vision of "twenty-first-century socialism".