José R. Cárdenas served in several foreign policy positions during the George W. Bush administration (2004-2009), including on the National Security Council staff. He is a consultant with Vision Americas in Washington, DC.

Some have speculated that cancer-stricken Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez may seek an audience with Pope Benedict XVI during the latter’s trip to Cuba this week.  Chávez, who is in Cuba as well for another round of radiation treatments, is said by some to be seeking the Pope’s blessing as the president struggles with his serious illness.

So far, there is no indication such a meeting will take place (nor, for that matter, is one scheduled with Cuban dissidents), but if it does, it would be the height of irony, given the rancor and hostility that have characterized Church-state relations in Venezuela since Chávez came to power.  It also likely reflects less any conversion on Chávez’s part than it does his need for favorable political optics heading into October’s presidential election.

Venezuelan Church leaders have been outspoken in their criticisms of Chávez’s authoritarian creep, but his attacks against Bishops and the Vatican have truly been beyond the pale.

Perhaps Chávez’s most notorious attack was when he called the Church a “tumor” on Venezuelan society following his temporary removal from power in 2002.  Chávez accused the Church of being complicit in his ouster, but Church leaders responded that the massive anti-government strikes and protests were not part of any conspiracy, but the Venezuelan people’s reaction to Chavez’s own radical behavior.

In 2010, following another round of Church criticisms of his polarizing policies, Chávez even attacked Pope Benedict himself, whom he had met in 2006 in the Vatican, saying, “He is not an ambassador of Christ.”  “Christ,” he said, “is in the people.”

Chávez’s troubles with the Church stem from the fact that he can tolerate no domestic challenge to his absolute authority.  Once in power, he went about systematically undermining all alternative poles of authority.  That is why he has sought to displace the Church’s social services with state programs, why he has pressured Catholic media, and tried to undermine Catholic education in Venezuela.  But the Venezuelan Catholic Church, with a few centuries head-start, has proven to be resilient and unintimidated.

Certainly, the Vatican is savvy enough not to allow itself to be used as a political prop for Chávez’s benefit back home.  But if it proves to be the case that Chávez, a man starkly facing his own mortality, was seeking a blessing and some sort of repentance, he ought to be reminded that redemption is not a one-way street; in fact, in involves penance. And there is still time to ensure that October’s elections are conducted freely and openly, with the opposition given a fair opportunity to state their case before the Venezuelan people.

If not, the Pope could always follow the advice of the late Venezuelan Cardinal Rosalio Castillo Lara, another critic of Chávez’s authoritarian ways, who was asked once whether he would ever give Chávez a blessing.  He replied, “More than a blessing: I’d give him an exorcism.”