Some followers of former Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez truly view the deceased politician as a god.
At a meeting of the ruling Unified Socialist Party of Venezuela on Monday, delegate María Estrella Uribe delivered a new version of the “Our Father” prayer that substituted Chávez for the Christian version of god.
“We can’t leave without meeting this spiritual commitment,” Estrella Uribe said, before launching into the revised prayer. In translation, the prayer reads:
Our Chávez, who art in heaven, in the earth, in the sea and in ourselves -- the delegates -- hallowed be thy name, give to us your legacy to take to the people both here and far away … Give us today your light, so that it may lead us every day. Don’t let us fall into the temptation of capitalism, but deliver us from the evil of the oligarchy and the crime of contraband because for us is the fatherland, peace and life, forever and ever.
Estrella Uribe finished of the speech with an “amen” followed a “Viva Chávez!” with her fist raised in the air.
A larger-than-life figure whose leftwing policies polarized the country, Chávez held the presidency in Venezuela from 1999 until his death from an undisclosed form of cancer last year.
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