Chavez Church ‘not recognised by Canterbury’

Hugo Chavez' Anglican Church is not a recognized part of the Anglican Communion, a spokesman for the Anglican Consultative Council said. “We have no knowledge of them at all,” the Rev Canon James Rosenthal told ReligiousIntelligence.com on July 15, while the Episcopal Diocese of Venezuela denied any link to the self styled Iglesia Católica Reformada de Venezuela Rito Anglicano (ICARVEN). Formed by clergy loyal to the regime of Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez by disgruntled Roman Catholic, Anglican and Lutheran clergy, ICARVEN consecrated Monseñor Jon Jen Siu-García as Bishop Coadjutor, Monseñor Enrique José Albornoz-Cano as Bishop and Monseñor Alexis José Bertis-Vargas as Suffragan Bishop last month. Leaders of the new church pledged their loyalty to the regime and to its socialist “Bolivarian” principles. The Bolivarian church in Venezuela is modeled upon the 19th century Mexican Catholic Church. In the wake of the 1857 Revolution, Mexican President Benito Juárez ordered the expropriation of all Catholic Church lands. The great majority of clergy remained loyal to Rome, but 18 pro-Juárez priests struck out on their own, forming a new church and eventually coming under the wing of the American Episcopal Church. The new church was “catholic” in name only, Archbishop Ubaldo Santana Sequera of Maracaibo, president of the Venezuelan episcopal conference told El Universal last week. “Anyone can express his or her religious proposal; what seems to me to be a usurpation is the use of the word Catholic in the title.'