The Venezuelan government has launched an investigation into a string of recent attacks on Roman Catholic targets that have refueled the long and bitter conflict between the church hierarchy and President Hugo Chávez's government and supporters.
Interior Minister Lucas Rincón announced the inquiry Tuesday just hours after an arsonist's fire heavily damaged a church in Los Teques, a Caracas satellite town, for the second time in two weeks.
Although no one has been arrested in the attacks, Venezuela's leading archbishop has attacked the leftist Chávez and his supporters for turning his ''revolution'' into pseudo-religion, while a pro-government newspaper published a photo montage showing the prelate in a Nazi uniform.
Throughout Venezuela's history, ''Not even members of extremely radical religious groups had expressed so much hatred toward the religious sentiments of the Venezuelan people,'' another church leader, Msgr. Juan María Leonardi, bishop of the western diocese of Punto Fijo, said in a recent statement.
PRO-CHAVEZ OUTBURST
The latest outbreak in the church-Chávez feud began Dec. 6, when dozens of pro-Chávez demonstrators staged a brief but tumultuous occupation of a Caracas square that has been a key gathering spot for the opposition since October 2002.
The Chávez supporters partially wrecked a platform and altar set up by the opposition, painted pro-Chávez slogans and hurled fruit and other objects at those present. A small statue of the Virgin Mary was smashed and a larger one sprayed with red paint during the melee.
Msgr. Baltazar Porras, archbishop of the western city of Mérida and the country's leading prelate, described the events as ''an attack on the deepest and noblest sentiments of all believers in the Catholic faith'' and blamed them on a tendency to ``turn political beliefs . . . into a kind of supreme deity.''
STINGING REBUKE
These words, from a church leader who has clashed repeatedly with the Chávez government in the past, brought a stinging rebuke from Vice President José Vicente Rangel, who said the archbishop was a ``systematic spokesman for the most recalcitrant opposition.''
Rangel also compared Porras' language to that used ''by the Spanish Catholic hierarchy to stimulate the pro-Franco crusade that led to a bloodbath'' during the Spanish Civil War of the 1930s.
The government newspaper Vea later produced a photo montage of Porras dressed in Nazi uniform and the following day a cartoon showing him holding a bomb.
Last week, a firebomb partially destroyed a church in Los Teques. The following day, four small religious figures were smashed in the community of Cardón in the western state of Falcón. And the next day, two more statues in the same area suffered a similar fate.
Police have so far failed to determine who is behind these attacks and whether they are connected. No one has claimed responsibility.
GOD ON HIS SIDE
Most Venezuelans are Catholic, and Chávez, who also claims to be Catholic, has frequently declared that ''God is with the revolution,'' meaning his policies on behalf of Venezuela's poor majority.
But he has engaged in fierce verbal clashes with church leaders since taking office in early 1999, even crossing swords with the papal nuncio, the Vatican's ambassador in Caracas.
He has called the church a ''tumor'' and once declared that the bishops were in need of exorcism ``so that the devil inside comes out from under their vestments.''
Church leaders in turn have criticized his poor-against-the-rich rhetoric as divisive and questioned the efficacy of his government's social and economic policies.