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Wednesday, July 30, 2025

Trinis join in prayers for ailing Chavez

by

20130104

The lo­cal com­mu­ni­ty joined hands with Venezue­lans yes­ter­day with prayers for ail­ing Venezue­lan pres­i­dent Hugo Chavez with a spe­cial mas at the La Div­ina Pas­to­ra Church, Siparia. Al­though there has been talk about who would re­place Chavez if he were not able to re­sume the post as pres­i­dent, Am­bas­sador Ex­tra­or­di­nary and Plenipo­ten­tiary des­ig­nate Coro­mo­to Godoy-Calderon said Chavez was ex­pect­ed to make a full re­cov­ery.

Chavez, who was first vot­ed in as pres­i­dent of the oil-rich na­tion in 1999 un­der the Unit­ed So­cial­ist Par­ty of Venezuela (PSUV), un­der­went his fourth can­cer surgery in just 18 months on?De­cem­ber 11. He has not been seen in pub­lic since. Yes­ter­day, he was said to be still in hos­pi­tal in Ha­vana, Cu­ba, suf­fer­ing from "res­pi­ra­to­ry de­fi­cien­cy" af­ter com­pli­ca­tions from a se­vere lung in­fec­tion.

Speak­ing with re­porters yes­ter­day, Godoy-Calderon said the ser­vice was one of many be­ing held around the Caribbean, South and Cen­tral Amer­i­ca, as Chavez had touched the lives of many around the world. "Women and men all over the world are pray­ing for him and we are so thank­ful to the peo­ple of T&T," she said.

"When we came to the mass, we re­alised that peo­ple here re­al­ly un­der­stood the dif­fi­cult times that Pres­i­dent Chavez is go­ing through. "With the prayers and the love of the peo­ple, he will re­cov­er." She said her com­pa­tri­ots have been pray­ing more than ever and they are adamant that their "Co­man­dante Chavez" will re­turn to the helm.

She said all she knew about his present con­di­tion was what had been re­port­ed in the me­dia. She said the La Div­ina Pas­to­ra Church was cho­sen as it had sym­bol­ic ties with its name­sake in Bar­quisime­to, Venezuela. De­liv­er­ing his ser­mon, Fr Mar­tin Sir­ju was thank­ful that ties with Venezuela which spanned over 200 years had not dis­solved. He prayed for Chavez's re­cov­ery, say­ing he had per­formed many good works, es­pe­cial­ly with im­pov­er­ished com­mu­ni­ties.


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