The Pope receives María Corina Machado

Pope Leo XIV received this Monday in the Vatican the Venezuelan opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner Maria Corina Machado, the press office of the Holy See reported. The meeting of the Nobel Peace Prize winner and the Pope was announced in the bulletin with the Pope's agenda during the morning, but as usual, no further details were given. Pope Leo XIV asked this Friday during his speech to the diplomatic corps that the will of the Venezuelan people be respected and that peaceful solutions be sought away from "partisan interests".

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The Vatican has been closely following the situation in Venezuela, and The Washington Post published on January 9th that the pontifical state had tried to negotiate an offer of asylum in Russia for the Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro, before his capture and detention by US forces. The newspaper reported on a conversation between the Vatican's Cardinal Secretary of State, Pietro Parolin, and the U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See, Brian Burch, about an alleged Russian proposal to grant asylum to Maduro.