India, Jan. 13 -- Pope Leo XIV met with Venezuelan opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner Maria Corina Machado in a private audience at the Vatican on Monday. The meeting, which hadn't been previously included in the list of Leo's planned appointments, was later listed by the Vatican in its daily bulletin, without adding details. Machado is touring Europe and the United States after she reemerged in December to accept her Nobel Peace Prize in Norway.

Pope Leo, the first American pontiff, has called for Venezuela to remain an independent country after US forces captured former Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro from his compound in Caracas and flew him to New York to face federal charges of drug-trafficking. Leo had said he was f...