Treating People and Nations Right
Please allow me to start with a piece of exciting and positive news for the prolife community. On Sunday, Catholic News Agency reported that Puerto Rico has passed a law that rightly declares that all children in the womb are “natural persons.” As an added bonus, it prohibits surgical or drug treatments to transition a person’s gender identity from being used on people under the age of twenty-one (see David Ramos, “UPDATE: Puerto Rico enacts law recogniizing legal personhood of the unborn child.” Catholic News Agency. January 5, 2026. https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/268881/Puerto-Rico-passes-law-recognizing-legal-personhood-of-the-unborn-child).
I find joy and hope in this news. I pray for the day when all life from the moment of conception until natural death is treated with the respect and dignity it deserves.
As we work to ensure that the dignity of each and every life is respected, we must remember that this includes children and adults throughout their lives wherever they live.
With this in mind, I awoke on Saturday to the news that U.S. military forces had entered Venezuela and captured their President, Nicolas Maduro. I have been wondering what actions Trump had planned against him yet I was still shocked to learn that U.S. military troops had gone in and captured him.
It is tempting to write about this in political terms but I will refrain from that. There are also legal issues to consider but that is not my expertise. I write for spiritual and moral considerations.
So, I am going to share with you what Pope Leo XIV and one Venezuelan bishop said in the first 48 hours following the raid. Then I will provide references to relevant material I have produced in the past about treating people with the dignity they deserve. These references provide Catholic understanding of the dignity of every life without commenting on direct application in particular situations. Then, you can pray and reflect for yourself what this means for the situation in Venezuela. As you pray and reflect, do so concerning the morality involved in this political action.
Turning to Pope Leo’s response, I want to begin with what he says about Christian hope as we end our Jubilee Year of Hope. We read, “Pope Leo XIV said Christian hope “is not based on optimistic forecasts or human calculations” but on God’s decision to share humanity’s path so that no one is alone on life’s journey” (Victoria Cardiel, “Pope says Christian hope doesn’t depend on human calculations.” Catholic News Agency. January 4, 2026. https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/268863/pope-says-christian-hope-doesn-t-depend-on-human-calculations).
In this season of Christmas when we celebrate the Incarnation of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, Pope Leo then reminds us that our spirituality and what we think of what goes on in the world must reflect our belief in “the Incarnation of Jesus. We must care for humanity (ibid). Pope Leo XIV then states, “the good of the beloved Venezuelan people must prevail over every other consideration.”
It is in this spirit that the USCCB posted on its Facebook page Sunday morning these words of Pope Leo XIV.
“It is with deep concern that I am following the developments in Venezuela. The good of the beloved Venezuelan people must prevail over every other consideration. This must lead to the overcoming of violence, and to the pursuit of paths of justice and peace, guaranteeing the sovereignty of the country, ensuring the rule of law enshrined in its Constitution, respecting the human and civil rights of each and every person, and working together to build a peaceful future of cooperation, stability and harmony, with special attention to the poorest who are suffering because of the difficult economic situation. I pray for all this, and I invite you to pray too, entrusting our prayer to the intercession of Our Lady of Coromoto, and to Saints José Gregorio Hernández and Carmen Rendiles.” -Pope Leo XIV (my emphasis).
These words of Pope Leo XIV are echoed in Victoria Cardiel’s article, “Pope Leo XIV calls for respect for Venezuelan sovereignty after U.S. capture of Maduro.” (Catholic News Agency. January 4, 2026. https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/268859/pope-leo-xiv-calls-for-respect-of-venezuelan-sovereignty-after-us-capture-of-maduro). I thank the Holy Spirit for providing Pope Leo XIV with these words.
I am disappointed in words I hear that our nation’s leaders are using this raid to spread fear in other nations. Fear can be a powerful weapon but it cannot bring peace (see My homily for January 1st). Fear brings darkness when what we need is light (see my reflection for the Epiphany of the Lord).
Life in Venezuela is at a critical point. Some people are fleeing. One wonders about riots and aggression. In this fragile time, Bishop Juan Carlos Bravo Salazar of Petare, Venezuela is calling for peace (David Ramos, “Venezuelan bishop calls for ‘maintaining serenity, peace, and above all, a climate of prayer’” Catholic News Agency. January 3, 2026. https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/268845/venezuelan-bishop-calls-for-maintaining-serenity-peace-and-above-all-a-climate-of-prayer).
Let us join him and the people of Venezuela in praying for peace. Here I share the following prayer that was posted on Catholic News Agency’s Facebook page on Sunday.
In this moment of uncertainty, we join in prayer for our brothers and sisters in Venezuela, and we entrust this beloved nation to its patroness, Our Lady of Coromoto:
Jesus Christ, our Lord,
we come before You in this time of great need for our homeland.
We feel both anxious and hopeful,
and we ask for strength as a precious gift of Your Spirit.
We long to be a people committed to respect for human dignity,
to liberty, justice, and the pursuit of the common good.
As children of God, grant us the grace to build fraternal coexistence,
to love everyone without exclusion,
to stand in solidarity with the poor,
and to work for reconciliation and peace.
Grant us the wisdom of dialogue and encounter,
so that together we may build a civilization of love
through genuine participation and fraternal solidarity.
You call us together as one nation, and we say to You:
Here we are, Lord, with our Mother, Mary of Coromoto, ready to continue the path we have begun
and to bear witness to the faith of a people
united in new hope.
And so we all proclaim together: Venezuela!
Walks and lives with Jesus Christ, Lord of history!
Amen.
Let us pray that our U.S. leaders respect the dignity of all individuals in Venezuela and the sovereignty of their nation. Our needs and rights do not supersede their needs and rights. In fact, morally and as Christians, we cannot enjoy our rights without understand that our rights come with a responsibility to ensure the rights of others are respected (see my article “With Rights Come Responsibilities”, written with other situations in mind but very relevant here).
It is true that the United States has a right to defend itself as does every nation, including Venezuela. Those who support the raid by the U.S. military to capture Maduro speak of narcoterrorism. If they are correct, we must still remember Jesus’ words calling us to “love our enemies” (see Matthew 5:44).
Let us pray that our U.S. leaders serve our needs in accord with what Pope St. John XXIII wrote in Pacem in Terris, “Human society can be neither well-ordered nor prosperous without the presence of those who, invested with legal authority, preserve its institutions and do all that is necessary to sponsor actively the interests of all its members. And they derive their authority from God, for, as St. Paul teaches, “there is no power but from God” “ (46) while respecting the dignity of the Venezuelan people and the sovereignty of their nation.
We offer these prayers as called for by St. Paul as he wrote to St. Timothy, “First of all, then, I ask that supplications, prayers, petitions, and thanksgivings be offered for everyone, for kings and for all in authority, that we may lead a quiet and tranquil life in all devotion and dignity. This is good and pleasing to God our savior, who wills everyone to be saved and to come to knowledge of the truth” (1 Timothy 2:1-4).
Regarding the dignity of all life, if you have not already seen my video series, Treating Life with Dignity and Love, I encourage to your watch Part I for what I say about why every life has dignity from God from the perspective of our Catholic faith and it is found in our U.S. Declaration of Independence.
Remember, if we want peace, we must work for justice. Pope Paul VI said this in his message for the Day of Peace, January 1, 1972. Justice requires all nations to be treated equally and the rights of every individual to be respected.
Peace,
Fr. Jeff