Pope Leo XIV meets with Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado in a surprise audience

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ROME (AP) — Pope Leo XIV met with Venezuelan opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner María Corina Machado in a private audience at the Vatican on Monday.

The meeting, which hadn’t been previously included in the list of Leo’s planned appointments, was later listed by the Vatican in its daily bulletin, without adding details.

Machado is touring Europe and the United States after she reemerged in December after 11 months in hiding to accept her Nobel Peace Prize in Norway.

Pope Leo, the first American pontiff, has called for Venezuela to remain an independent country after U.S. forces captured former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro from his compound in Caracas and flew him to New York to face federal charges of drug-trafficking.

Leo had said he was following the developments in Venezuela with “deep concern,” and urged the protection of human and civil rights in the Latin American country.

Venezuela’s opposition, backed by consecutive Republican and Democratic administrations in the U.S., had vowed for years to immediately replace Maduro with one of their own and restore democracy to the oil-rich country. But U.S. President Donald Trump delivered them a heavy blow by allowing Maduro’s vice president, Delcy Rodríguez, to assume control.

Meanwhile, most opposition leaders, including Machado, are in exile or prison.

After winning the 2025 Nobel Prize for Peace, Machado said she’d like to give it to or share with Trump.

Machado dedicated the prize to Trump, along with the people of Venezuela, shortly after it was announced. Trump has coveted and openly campaigned for winning the Nobel Prize himself since his return to office in January 2025.

The organization that oversees the Nobel Peace Prize — the Norwegian Nobel Institute — said, however, that once it's announced, the prize can’t be revoked, transferred or shared with others.

“The decision is final and stands for all time,” it said in a short statement last week.