Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican's secretary of state, pressed the United States for clarity on its plans for Venezuela and raised a possible Russian asylum option for Nicolás Maduro days before a U.S. special operations raid captured the Venezuelan leader, according to government documents obtained by The Washington Post.
The documents describe a Christmas Eve meeting in which Parolin summoned Brian Burch, the U.S. ambassador to the Holy See, to ask whether Washington intended to target only drug traffickers or pursue regime change. Parolin agreed Maduro "had to go," the documents say, but urged the United States to offer him an exit.
