Venezuelan opposition leader returns from exile and attends Mass at popular shrine

María Corina Machado, recipient of the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize, returned to Venezuela on Oct. 25 after nearly a year in exile. In her first public appearance on Venezuelan soil, the political leader arrived at the Archdiocesan Shrine of the Divine Shepherdess in the city of Barquisimeto.

Why Machado returned After the July 28, 2024, presidential election, the Venezuelan National Electoral Council, controlled by the ruling socialist regime, declared incumbent President Nicolás Maduro to be the winner. However, opposition candidate Edmundo González claimed victory , and his organization said it had to vote tallies to prove it.

In a sense, Machado, very popular among voters, was the power behind González because although she had been banned from running for office by the Maduro regime, she campaigned openly in support of González.

To quell protests after the election, the repressive apparatus of the Maduro regime unleashed an unprecedented campaign of persecution against opposition politicians, activists, and protesters, and Machado went into hiding.

She left the country in December 2025 in a complex extraction operation coordinated from the United States that took her to…