Cardinal Baltazar Porras announced this Friday that he recovered his Venezuelan passport, document that was confiscated in December at the Simón Bolívar International Airport in Maiquetía.
“As a Venezuelan citizen, I already have my passport,” Porras expressed on his social networks.
His passport had been confiscated on December 9, 2025 when he was preparing to travel to Colombia and later to Spain. Immigration officials alleged that the document had “problems” and proceeded to cancel it, preventing him from boarding the flight. He was even denied boarding despite carrying a Vatican State passport, which generated rejection in ecclesiastical sectors and human rights organizations.
After the incident, the cardinal He was searched and his luggage was removed from the plane, a situation described as “humiliating” by the Military and Hospitaller Order of Saint Lazarus of Jerusalem. Organizations such as Provea denounced that the annulment of identity documents has become a recurrent repressive practice in the country.
On October 19, in the prelude to the canonization of doctor José Gregorio Hernández and mother Carmen Rendilesthe cardinal had denounced from the Lateran University in Rome that the Venezuelan crisis was “morally unacceptable” and requested the release of political prisoners, a fact that displeased the government of Nicolás Maduro.
