Reports have surfaced that an outspoken Catholic priest in Maracaibo, Venezuela was viciously beaten unconscious late last week by armed security forces of Venezuela’s Cuba-backed and Castro-controlled dictatorship. Father Jose Palmar, who for years has been exposing and publicly denouncing the Castro-Communist takeover of Venezuela, was walking alongside demonstrators in a protest against the dictatorship’s violent crackdown on dissidents when he was accosted by uniformed security agents who brutally beat the priest and left him unconscious on the street. Friends and supporters rushed Father Palmar to a hospital where he was treated for his injuries.

Nevertheless, even after suffering a vicious beating, the Venezuelan priest refuses to back down from the repressive regime installed in Caracas. In an interview yesterday with NTN24, three days after the attack, Father Palmar remained firm in his opposition to the puppet dictatorship of Nicolas Maduro and continued to strongly denounce the takeover of Venezuela by Cuba’s Castro-communist regime. He placed the blame for the repression taking place in Venezuela not only on the thuggish Chavistas placed in power, but as well on the Cuban regime in Havana, which has been orchestrating and controlling the destruction of Venezuela’s liberties and is attempting to install an oppressive Stalinist dictatorship in that country.

Unlike the Catholic Church in Cuba, which has allowed itself to be compromised and subjugated to the apartheid Castro dictatorship, the Venezuelan Church has been one of the major defenders of freedom and human rights in that country. Let us hope the Venezuelan Catholic Church does not follow the path of Cuba’s Church and remains true to the Christian faith.