Olga Lucia Alvarez Benjumea ARCWP- Calling for Peace and Justice in Venezuela- A Message from Women Priests in Venezuela and Colombia

We want to record our repudiation, pain, indignation and shame, before the wave of news about Venezuela, that feed and encourage hatred, and that show as the only way out of this reality, a desire for war.

This way of acting fills us with fear, because those who go to war are usually young people, who are forced by those who hold power, to fight in defense of their interests; a power that seeks to appropriate the wealth of our countries, whether of mineral goods, agricultural products or labor taken from our peoples and employed in subhuman conditions, at the service of their interests.

We suffer the suffering and tragedy of immigrants, whether men, women, children or young people who are forced to leave their families, their homes and studies, placing them in danger in the midst of a hostile racist, regionalist and xenophobic society.

Both of us have forgotten that, in one way or another, we have been emigrants because of violence, generated by the ambition and struggle for the power of a few.

We do not accept the misrepresentation of the truth and the multiple lies and misinformation in which we find ourselves involved and which, like a spider web, envelop us, thus sowing hatred and violence among our peoples.

No to violence against migrants, not to xenophobia. Women and men, we have been created in the image and likeness of God, we are brothers / as. All united / as we ask to respect the life, the Life of God, in each one.

We ask for respect for Peace, not only for Venezuela, but for all the neighboring countries, including the Caribbean islands, because many innocent and defenseless people are being put at risk.

We ask the countries involved in promoting violence and war, no more, no more bloodshed, no more violence, no more xenophobia, let's make Peace, Reconciliation and Forgiveness.