Ana Sánchez found herself roaming the halls of the Hospital José María Vargas in Caracas, Venezuela, one morning in late July. Ms. Sánchez, a former nurse, needed an eye operation because of her glaucoma. The other public medical facility in the capital city had specialists who could handle the procedure, but it did not have the necessary supplies to manage the surgery.

Before she could have the procedure done, she had to procure them herself at the Caracas public hospital where she previously worked, the same hospital where Blessed José Gregorio Hernández Cisneros, soon to be recognized as a saint, once worked as well.

Ms. Sánchez’s plight is not unique in contemporary Venezuela. It is one that Blessed José Gregorio also knew well in his time, serving the poor of Caracas in the late 19th and early 20th centuries as a medical doctor. In a June survey sponsored by HumVenezuela, a coalition of local humanitarian assistance agencies, access to quality health care was named by 53 percent of respondents as the nation’s second most pressing issue, just behind access to clean water.

Venezuela’s failing infrastructure and diminished public health capacity are longstanding problems, among many others, that predate U.S. sanctions intensified this year by the Trump administration. The nation’s chaotic and sometimes violent political conditions and low pay for professionals have forced many health care workers to join a vast migration out of Venezuela in the years since the death of former president Hugo Chávez in 2013 and the ascension of current president Nicolás Maduro.

On Oct. 19, Venezuela will witness the canonization of its first saints in Rome. Blessed José Gregorio (1864-1919) and Mother María Carmen Rendiles Martínez (1903-1977), the founder of the Servants of Jesus of Venezuela and an educator. Five more Blesseds from different countries will also be recognized as saints by Pope Leo XIV.

A canonization campaign to free political prisoners

The upcoming canonizations have offered Venezuelans a chance to raise awareness of current vexing challenges in Venezuela. In July, the Committee for the Freedom of Political Prisoners, a local human rights effort, petitioned for Pope Leo XIV’s intercession in pressing for the release of more than 800 political prisoners currently held by the Maduro-led government before the October canonization ceremony in Rome.

Online, that effort has been publicized as the #CanonizaciónSinPresosPolíticos (“Canonization without Political Prisoners”) campaign. The group has ramped up its activities with local and international Masses and vigils as the Oct. 19 canonization date approaches.

On Oct. 7, the campaign was supported in a pastoral letter from the Venezuelan Episcopal Conference. Venezuela’s bishops wrote that the canonizations offer an opportune moment “for state authorities to issue clemency measures that allow those imprisoned for political reasons to be released.”

“We believe that this would promote peace and harmony not only for the families and loved ones of these individuals, but for society as a whole.”

Most of the political prisoners had been supporters of presidential candidate and former diplomat Edmundo González. Many Venezuelans believe he was the actual victor in the July 2024 elections. After many supporters and regime critics were arrested this year, Mr. González fled to asylum in Spain. María Corina Machado, the charismatic opposition leader behind the González candidacy, was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace on Oct. 10.

Edward Ocariz is one of the key supporters of the campaign to free the prisoners. A human rights activist, Mr. Ocariz was detained last year after the controversial elections on terrorism charges and imprisoned at the Tocuyito maximum-security prison before being conditionally released last December. His faith stayed with him through his ordeal, despite not initially being allowed to pray aloud while in prison, he told America.

“José Gregorio and Mother Carmen worked for the truth, for God, with scarce resources,” Mr. Ocariz told America. “They searched for the truth and they are being recognized in a moment where our dignity has been pushed aside. Venezuela needs truth, justice and reconciliation.”

In his view, the church holds a key role in making the goal of the #CanonizaciónSinPresosPolíticos a reality and in creating future political reform in Venezuela beyond that campaign.

“Our saints bring the opportunity for reconciliation and forgiveness,” he said. That is mercy, Mr. Ocariz said, that he would be willing to extend to his jailers. “We must find each other again as fellow Venezuelans.”

Pope Francis signed the Hernández and Rendiles canonization decrees in February and March respectively, during his hospitalization at the Gemelli Hospital. The news brought instant joy to Catholic faithful across Venezuela. It also marked the start of a major evangelical campaign led by the Archdiocese of Caracas, the capital city of Venezuela. Santos Para Todos (Saints for Everyone) highlighted the life and deeds of Blessed José Gregório and Blessed Mother Carmen.

“They are jointly showing us how sainthood can be for everyone but also teaching us compromise with the fields they worked in,” Caracas Archbishop Raúl Biord said at the launch of the Santos Para Todos campaign in May.

The connections of the two soon-to-be saints to contemporary Venezuela are clear—the two blessed Venezuelans devoted their lives to health and education, two social needs that remain profound humanitarian challenges in this low-income nation.

José Gregorio Hernández, the Doctor of the Poor

Blessed José Gregorio Hernández has strongly figured in Venezuelan faith life for many decades, a trusted spiritual friend to Venezuelans in times of need, especially in matters of health. A devotional card that includes a photo of a smartly dressed Blessed José Gregorio in a black suit and hat, his hands clasped behind his back—taken during a study trip to New York City in October 1917—has long been shared across Venezuela and placed near the sickbeds of infirm or ill family members.

“His life offers a powerful witness at the intersection of science, sanctity and social justice,” said Andrew Chesnut, the chair in Catholic Studies at Virginia Commonwealth University and an expert on devotional life in Latin America.

Blessed José Gregorio was born into a pious family in Isnotú, a town in Trujillo State in western Venezuela. He graduated with highest honors as a medical doctor from the Central University of Venezuela in Caracas in 1888.

After studies in France, he returned to Venezuela equipped with the latest medical knowledge and resources to attempt to modernize his home nation’s public health services. Blessed José Gregorio established pioneering laboratories for histology and bacteriology at the Central University of Venezuela, where he also served as a lecturer. He was among the local team of physicians that fought and suppressed the Spanish flu pandemic in Venezuela in 1918.

But Blessed José Gregorio was not just a doctor and a pious man. He was an author in science, philosophy and even art, as well as a self-taught tailor, remembered by friends as a humble but elegant man. He was even regarded as a great dancer and piano player.

Blessed José Gregorio “came back from France as a [holistic] physician: not only was he capable of diagnosing patients and treating his patients with the latest techniques, but he made sure to pray with them and comfort them spiritually,” said Enrique López-Loyo, a member, as Hernández was, of the Venezuelan National Academy of Medicine.

“We hold up his example among medical students as a man of service,” Dr. López-Loyo said. Dr. López-Loyo was the chief pathologist who conducted Blessed José Gregorio’s exhumation in 2021.

Blessed José Gregorio was a man of deep faith and especially devoted to the Virgin Mary. He never married and tried to enter religious life three times—once at the Carthusian Charterhouse in Lucca, Italy—but he was unable to succeed in these efforts because of his chronic asthma and the manual labor required by some communities. Beyond those difficulties his students in Caracas and the local bishop urged him to return to continue his accompaniment of the poor and teaching efforts in Venezuela.

Thanks to his medical practice, he earned the description he is known for until today: el Médico de los Pobres, the Doctor of the Poor. Blessed José Gregorio did not charge patients for his services, even paying for their treatments out of his own pocket if that proved necessary. He died on June 30, 1919, after being hit by one of the first cars in Caracas while taking medicine to an impoverished woman.

Blessed José Gregorio’s canonization process took 76 years. The Rev. Gerardino Barrachini, pastor of the La Candelaria Church in Caracas (Hernández’s resting place) and current vice-postulator of his canonization cause, attributed this delay to an initial lack of trained local personnel on canonization affairs and uneven support from local church authorities.

Dr. Chesnut suggested that another possible barrier might have been the popular use of the Doctor of the Poor as an intercessor in some spiritualist practices, known in Latin America as espiritismo mariano.

“The church has explicitly distanced his cause from these [folk] practices, emphasizing instead his medical career and his devotion to Catholic charity,” Dr. Chesnut said.

Blessed José Gregorio is already well known beyond his own country. He is called Hermano Gregorio (Brother Gregorio) in Ecuador and is venerated in the United States, Lebanon and Kenya. His fame spread according to “his own merit,” Father Barrichelli said, “before the Venezuelan diaspora [made him] known worldwide.”

The first physician saint of Latin American origin will have an immediate task in his home country right after his canonization: “To inspire everyone to urgently work for the improvement of healthcare,” Father Barrichelli said.

Mother Carmen Rendiles: ‘Let God be’ in each person

Blessed Carmen Elena Rendiles Martínez was born in Caracas in 1903, the third of nine siblings in an affluent family. Unlike Blessed José Gregorio, she was able to live a full consecrated life. But like him, she focused her work on education and social outreach.

Blessed Mother Carmen was born without her left arm. That congenital defect meant she was rejected by some local congregations, but the Sisters of Saint Joseph of Tarbes, a congregation of French origin, did accept her in Caracas at the age of 24. She later founded the Servants of Jesus of Venezuela (Siervas de Jesús in Spanish) in 1965, which she led for the rest of her life.

“Since she grew up without an arm, she never felt its need,” Mother Rosa María Ríos, a fellow S.d.J. member, said. “She deftly practiced crafts like carpentry and painting.”

Mother Ríos has been vice-postulator for Rendiles’ cause since 1995. She said furniture handmade by Blessed Mother Carmen can be viewed in an exhibition close to the chapel of her resting place.

Mother Ríos told America, “Blessed Mother Carmen learned not just how to follow what God asked of her but also to bravely answer the needs of her time, through poverty and a sense of leadership, all with a strong devotion to Eucharistic Adoration.”

The 84 Servants of Jesus currently run seven Catholic elementary schools across Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador and Spain, while also closely supporting priests and parishes. Mother Ríos first met Blessed Mother Carmen as a young student in 1966. Her example inspired her to become a novice in the nascent congregation.

“Blessed Mother Carmen’s vocation, our charism, is the spiritual education of the person, especially [young people] from families of all backgrounds. We strive to help people grow closer to God, to let [God] ‘be’ through them,” Mother Ríos said.

During her life, Blessed Mother Carmen frequently visited the schools and parochial works of her congregation. Instead of formal classes, she liked to participate in free talk with students and parents about the close relation between faith and everyday life. Her teaching style was particularly inspired by her experiences as a young catechist in parishes near her hometown, according to her former pupil.

“Mother Carmen liked to work discreetly like yeast works on flour,” she said. Because of her canonization, “Venezuelans are now getting to know more about her life and thoughts.”

Mother Ríos believes the education system in Venezuela requires “rebuilding.” According to a June 2025 survey focused on education from the HumVenezuela coalition, almost half of school-aged children in Venezuela—about 3 million children and teens—do not regularly attend primary school. They are discouraged by precarious conditions at home, thrown into disorder by food insecurity, migration and other social and economic forces, or subjected to bad conditions at the public schools where crumbling infrastructure and teacher shortages have been a persistent problem.

Venezuela’s faithful, both those residing in the country and those in exile in other nations, are expected to join Pope Leo XIV at the canonization ceremony for Blesseds Hernández and Rendiles on Oct. 19. Cardinal Pietro Parolin, who was the apostolic nuncio to Venezuela between 2009 and 2013, will also celebrate a special celebratory Mass in Rome for Venezuelan visitors.

A major outdoor Mass, to be held on Oct. 25 at the Estadio Monumental (a Caracas venue with a capacity for 50,000 attendees), will be the highlight of the nationwide canonization celebrations. Mr. Maduro is not expected to attend the Mass, but it is expected that some members of his government will be present. So far the Maduro government has offered logistical support to canonization events but has not announced further extraordinary initiatives related to the canonizations.

The vice-postulators for the new saints, Father Barrachini and Mother Ríos, are looking forward to seeing what the canonization will mean for Venezuelans from all backgrounds. “Saints are meant to be an inspiration—for authorities, academia, private sector, everyone—to stand and work together towards making a reality the world that they dreamed of,” Father Barrachini said.

Estefanía Salazar contributes from Caracas, Venezuela.