Hugo Chavez is dead, he is no more! The cruel hand of death has finally snatched him away from us. He battled for two years to see if he could complete what he had started, but the dark laws that govern the workings of human systems have destroyed his life. Medicine and series of operations have proved powerless to accomplish what was passionately hoped for, what millions of human hearts demanded.
With the last few comrades registering on Sunday morning (March 10th) the total number taking part in the congress went over 2800. The main discussions of the day were on the coming election campaign, an organisational discussion and a report on the work of the IMT internationally.
Hugo Chávez is no more. The cause of freedom, socialism and humanity has lost a courageous champion. He died on Tuesday, March 5, at 4.25 pm local time. The news was announced by Vice President Maduro. The President was just 58, and had been 14 years in power. He has been battling cancer for the last two years, but when news of his death was announced, it came as a shock.
In a period of crisis and decline of capitalism, to many people religion is the one certainty to cling on to. But if the Pope himself is no longer convinced he can keep his position until his death, this illusion of solidity begins to break down. The effect of the surprise announcement of his retirement by Pope Benedict XVI on the consciousness of over a billion Roman Catholics is going to be that of a spiritual earthquake, and it is surely going to have political consequences too.
The last time a Pope abdicated his position before Benedict XVI was in 1415, when Gregory XII retired with the purpose of recomposing the Western Schism, a forty-year long split between the Church of Rome and the Church of Avignon. The papal spokesman himself has ruled out serious health issues behind the 2013 abdication. It seems that this pontiff’s resignation is also based on a profound split within the Catholic Church and particularly within the Roman Curia, i.e. the government of the Church and the administrative apparatus of its miniature theocracy.
