Hundreds of Venezuelans gathered at St. Mary of the Lake Church Aug. 1 to pray for their beleaguered country.

The service, which included personal prayers in front of the Blessed Sacrament, came days after the July 28 presidential election, in which incumbent Nicolás Maduro declared himself the winner of a third consecutive term despite opposition leaders and independent observers saying that paper receipts from voting machines show that his opponent, Edmundo González Urrutia, won handily.

The election was considered tainted even before the voting took place, as Maduro had banned a main opposition party and imprisoned potential opponents.

In protests that broke out after Maduro’s declaration that he had won, at least 17 people were killed, Father Manuel Dorantes told the congregation in English and in Spanish.

In praying for peace in Venezuela, Dorantes cited St. John XXIII’s 1963 encyclical “Pacem in Terris,” which said that for peace to exist, four conditions of the human spirit must be met: truth, justice, love and freedom.

“The truth will triumph over lies,” Dorantes said. “Unity will triumph over division. Life will triumph over death.”

Dorantes, pastor of St. Mary of the Lake and Our Lady of Lourdes Parish, said Venezuelans began arriving in St. Mary of the Lake’s Buena Park and the nearby Ravenswood neighborhood about five years ago, when he became pastor of Our Lady of the Lake.

At that time, most of the people coming from Venezuela were from the professional class and had the resources to emigrate from their home country following Maduro’s 2018 election. According to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner on Refugees, more than 7.7 million people have left Venezuela in recent years, most of them since 2015.

For the last two years, many have ended up being bused or flown to Chicago from Texas. More than 45,000 migrants have arrived in Chicago since the first buses arrived in August 2022, and most are from Venezuela.

“It’s a country of 28 million, and 8 million have left,” Dorantes said. “They all have family there. That’s 16 million mothers and fathers who are in Venezuela.”

They have left because of violence perpetrated by or in support of Maduro’s authoritarian regime, or because of a worsening economic crisis that has made it difficult to survive.

“We’re talking about a place where you can get arrested for going outside wearing white and saying you want the truth,” Dorantes said. “Some of the people that come, maybe they’ve had a family member arrested. Maybe they’ve been arrested.

The parish has also worked to minister to the newly arrived migrants, most of whom made their way largely on foot through Central America to the U.S. border with Mexico. Parish staff and parishioners visited the Chicago Police Department’s 19th District station, where people slept on the floor and then in tents outside.

They noticed that the people there had no access to showers, so they opened up parish facilities for three hours three days a week, said Familia de Corde Jesu Sister Guadalupe Limas, who did faith formation and Hispanic ministry at the parish. About 75 people were able to shower each day.

While the families were there to clean up, they were offered refreshments and toys for the children and asked if they were interested in sacramental preparation.

Eventually, a dozen migrants were baptized in the parish, and the parish collaborated with Catholic Charities to help seven families move into their own apartments.

Since migrants were moved out of police stations and tent encampments surrounding them, it has been more difficult to reach out to them, as outsiders are not allowed in city-run shelters, Sister Guadalupe said.

However, several families still come to the parish to worship, and the Wednesday evening soup kitchen that serves 320 people a week is largely serving migrants, Sister Guadalupe said.

Dorantes said that when the parish first heard about the buses arriving, he gathered parish leaders and asked what they could do.

“There’s a concept in Catholic social teaching about welcoming the migrant,” Dorantes said. “Now for us, that is no longer a concept. We have migrants right in our neighborhood. It was no longer theoretical, it was real. And the parish rallied.”

Many of the Venezuelans in the Chicago area are eager to return home, Dorantes said, and hoped the July 28 election would be a turning point for the country.

He looked at a young boy playing in front of the church. After the service, the boy had run to the back of the church to embrace Dorantes. The child’s family is one of those sponsored by the parish, and he and his siblings were baptized at St. Mary of the Lake. The child’s mother sent Dorantes a video of his videocall with his grandmother in Venezuela.

“He said, ‘Grandma, I hope this is our last video call,’” Dorantes said. “’I hope we can go back and be with you and I can grow up with you.’ So many want to go home, and this was going to be their chance, and it was taken from them.”