The Vatican says it's willing to help facilitate talks between Venezuela's government and its opponents aimed at ending weeks of deadly unrest that have paralysed much of the country.
President Nicolas Maduro on Thursday said he was willing to sit down with the opposition under the watch of an outside observer.
He floated the name of Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin, who served as the Holy See's ambassador to Venezuela before being called to Rome last year.
The Vatican spokesman, the Reverend Federico Lombardi, said on Friday the Holy See and Parolin were "certainly willing and desirous to do whatever is possible for the good and serenity of the country".
He said Parolin "knows and loves" Venezuela. But he added that the Vatican needed to understand the expectations of its intervention and whether it could bring about a "desired outcome." Such a study is underway, he added.
Catholicism is a touchstone for critics of Maduro's socialist administration, and opposition leaders Leopoldo Lopez and Henrique Capriles, both known to sport rosaries, have been pressing the Vatican to take up the cause.
Maduro also heaped praise on Pope Francis after meeting with the first Latin American pontiff last year.
Although the church may be an acceptable go-between, the road to compromise in the deeply polarised country is a long one.
Hardliners on both sides continue to reject compromise even with at least 32 people killed and hundreds more injured, many of them during clashes between protesters and security forces sometimes joined by pro-government militias.
However, it would be politically difficult to reject an envoy sent by the wildly popular Francis in a country where more than 90 per cent of the population is Catholic.
