(OSV News) -- Cardinal Baltazar Porras has been denied permission to leave Venezuela and had his passport confiscated as the country's embattled dictatorship steps up harassment of church leaders and dissident voices amid rising U.S. pressure for regime change. Cardinal Porras is archbishop emeritus of Mérida and an outspoken advocate of the rights of the Venezuelan people.
Nobel laureate and Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado, meanwhile, was awarded the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize Dec. 10 in Oslo. Her daughter, Ana Corina Sosa, accepted the Nobel Peace Prize on Machado's behalf.
Machado arrived in the Norwegian capital later in the day on a private jet after making a harrowing exit via land and sea from Venezuelan territory, where she lives in hiding to avoid arrest. The Wall Street Journal reported Machado wore a wig and passed through 10 checkpoints in traveling from her suburban Caracas home to where she boarded a fishing boat for a trip through choppy waters to the island of Curaçao.
The Nobel laureate was reunited in Norway with her three children, all of whom live abroad. Nearly 8 million Venezuelans have left the oil-rich country over the past two decades as the economy collapsed under revolutionary socialist rule. Well-wishers gathered outside her hotel with many gifting her rosaries -- which she had hanging around her neck during an interview with the BBC.
"Of course I'm going back" to Venezuela, she told the BBC. "I know exactly the risks I'm taking."
"I'm going to be in the place where I'm most useful for our cause," she continued. "Until a short time ago, the place I thought I had to be was Venezuela, the place I believe I have to be today, on behalf of our cause, is Oslo."
Cardinal Porras' denied exit from Venezuela and Machado's international recognition came as U.S. military assets -- including the aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford -- amass in the southern Caribbean. U.S. forces seized an oil tanker off the Venezuelan coast, President Donald Trump said Dec. 10 -- an act Venezuela decried as piracy. U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said the same day that the tanker carried sanctioned oil from Iran and Venezuela.
Machado's team said it contacted the U.S. military prior to setting sail to avoid being struck by attacks on purported drugboats, which have claimed more than 80 lives over the past three months, The Wall Street Journal reported.
Trump has mused about regime change in Venezuela, which his administration accuses of facilitating drug shipments to the United States and has offered a $50 million reward for the arrest of President Nicolás Maduro.
Machado has not disapproved of Trump's pressure on Maduro. She told reporters in Oslo, "Venezuela has already been invaded. We have the Russian agents. We have the Iranian agents. We have terrorist groups such as Hezbollah, Hamas, operating freely in accordance with the regime. We have the Colombian guerrillas, the drug cartels. … This has turned Venezuela into the criminal hub of the Americas." She told the BBC, "We didn't want a war, we didn't look for it… it was Maduro who declared war on the Venezuelan people."
Edmundo González Urrutia, who replaced Machado on the ballot after she was disqualified as a candidate by the regime, won the July 2024 election in a landslide, according to tally sheets collected by the opposition. Pro-Maduro electoral officials, however, denied the opposition's victory.
Venezuela's bishops called for the results to be accepted. Multiple countries, including the United States, have condemned the election outcome as rigged.
The church has come under scrutiny as Maduro clings to power.
In October, Cardinal Porras, the retired archbishop of Caracas, called for the release of political prisoners. A large Mass in the national capital, Caracas, to celebrate the canonization of Venezuela's first saints -- St. José Gregorio Hernández, known as "doctor of the poor," and St. María Carmen Elena Rendiles Martínez, who was born with one arm missing but founded convents and schools -- was subsequently canceled due to security concerns. Cardinal Porras said later he was unable to travel to the hometown of St. José Gregorio Hernández for a celebration because the military closed the airport.
The cardinal said in an X post Dec. 10 that he was unable to board a flight to Spain after being told his "passport had problems." He said that he was told to sign papers stating, "I couldn't travel due to 'violation of travel regulations,'" and he was forbidden to photograph the document under threat of arrest. His passport was not returned to him.
"It's painful because it violates our rights as citizens, and there's no response whatsoever," Cardinal Porras said. "The message reiterated by Pope Leo XIV, 'We are ready to seek a solution and a lasting and just peace,' is the task for all of us, especially those of us with ethical responsibility to illuminate the path for all our brothers and sisters."
Pope Leo XIV has urged dialogue amid rising tensions between the United States and Venezuela. He told reporters Dec. 2, "I believe it's better to look for ways of dialogue, perhaps pressure, including economic pressure, but looking for other ways to change, if that's what the United States wants to do."
