Political rivals lay claim to first Venezuelan saints

Opposition leaders said José Gregorio Hernández Cisneros and María del Carmen Rendiles Martínez were ‘two saints for 30 million Venezuelan hostages’.

President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela said Pope Francis had done the country “justice” after its first saints were canonised on Sunday.

The communist leader was referring to the late Pope’s decision earlier this year to authorise the canonisation of José Gregorio Hernández Cisneros (1864-1919), a layman physician, and María del Carmen Rendiles Martínez (1903- 1977), a nun known as “Mother” Carmen.

Hernández was termed “the doctor of the poor”, while in 1965 Rendiles founded the order of the Servants of Jesus in Venezuela, opening several convents and schools. She was born with part of her left arm missing.

“We are happy because of our saints,” Maduro wrote on social media on 19 October. “They are both great! Pope Francis acted with justice!”

He continued: “The Venezuelan people feel immense, eternal gratitude [to] a Pope [who was a] friend and a brother.”

Meanwhile, Venezuela’s political opposition declared Hernández and Rendiles “two saints for 30 million Venezuelan hostages”.

In a joint statement, the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize laureate María Corina Machado and her ally Edmundo González remembered “more than 800,0000 political prisoners” as well as “thousands” of Venezuelans “who are persecuted and exiled”. 

They attended the canonisation Mass on Sunday as part of an 11-strong Venezuelan delegation including relatives of political prisoners, soldiers and members of González’s government-elect. Approximately 5,000 Venezuelans were present in St Peter’s Square

In 2024, González stood as the opposition presidential candidate in the general elections after Machado’s disqualification. Maduro claimed he won 51.2 per cent of the vote while González won 44.2 per cent, but Machado alleged that printouts of voting receipts from election-machines proved Gonzláez had won with about 67 per cent. The United States recognised him as the victor.

In their message, the two leaders spoke of the “millions” of Venezuelans “subjected to constant pain by a regime that does not know the will of the people and does not understand it has to go”.

Maduro followed the ceremony from the house-museum of Hernández in the Venezuelan capital Caracas. He said the doctor’s canonisation had “great meaning” at a time when Venezuela was “stalked” and “threatened by the greatest military power in history”, referring to the US naval deployment in the Caribbean.

He praised Sunday’s liturgy as a “beautiful celebration” which united Venezuelans “even more in spirituality and peace”, filling them with “great emotion”.

“Let us take the best of our saints to make this into a national value,” said Maduro, who has governed Venezuela since the death of the dictator Hugo Chávez in 2013.

Machado and González extolled the saints as “exemplary” Venezuelans who had “devoted their lives to serving others”. Their holiness offered “hope and consolation in the midst of darkness”, they said.

“Now we are ready for a new, imminent miracle, a time of light and freedom will arrive soon for the whole of Venezuela.”

On Monday the Vatican’s secretary of state Cardinal Pietro Parolin celebrated a thanksgiving Mass in St Peter’s for the canonisations, recalling his five-year tenure as apostolic nuncio to Venezuela up to 2013. He said Hernández and Rendiles were “saints for all”.

“Only by listening to the Lord can Venezuela move from death to life, breaking unjust pressures, freeing the oppressed, and building peace on justice, truth, freedom, and love,” he said, urging Venezuelans to seize the moment. “Do not let it pass in vain. May the new saints intercede so you may continue with hope and determination.”

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