schema:articleBody
| - Vatican Cardinal Secretary of State Pietro Parolin cancelled a visit to Venezuela to beatify "the doctor of the poor" due to the coronavirus pandemic, the Holy See said in a statement on Wednesday. Jose Gregorio Hernandez, who was born in 1864, is revered as a saint in Venezuela and known for having given free health care treatment to the poor and fought the Spanish flu epidemic at the start of the 20th century. He died in Caracas in 1919 after he was run over by a car. "Due to force majeure, mainly linked to the Covid-19 pandemic, the secretary of state will not be able to travel to Venezuela, as he wished, for the beatification," said the Vatican in a statement shared by Catholic church authorities in Caracas. The Apostolic Nuncio to Venezuela, Aldo Giordano will replace Parolin in the closed-doors ceremony in a school in Caracas on Friday. Pope Francis signed the beatification decree in July last year following the recognition of a miracle attributed to the late doctor. Yaxury Solorzano, a 10-year-old girl, survived in 2017 after being shot in the head. Doctors said that if she survived she would be permanently brain damaged, but Solorzano made a full recovery. Venezuela has registered almost 200,000 cases and more than 2,00 deaths from Covid amongst its 30 million population, according to official figures dismissed by the opposition as grossly under-estimated. erc/dga/bc/bgs
|