Spiritual ties of ousted Venezuelan President Maduro and successor include guru Sathya Sai Baba

Venezuela’s former President Nicolás Maduro and current acting President Delcy Rodríguez — both raised Catholic in an overwhelmingly Christian country — have a deep reverence for an Indian spiritual leader who died in 2011.

Religious identity is complex in Venezuela, where it is common for people to blend multiple religious and spiritual practices. For Maduro and Rodríguez, that blend includes the teachings of Sathya Sai Baba, who has had a strong global following for over 50 years for his message of unity, love and spiritual oneness that transcends religious, social and cultural barriers.

Maduro frequently invoked Christ, the Holy Spirit and God in his speeches as president, framing his government’s struggles as a spiritual battle for Venezuela’s soul and sovereignty. Just weeks before his Jan. 3 capture by U.S. forces, he celebrated the centenary of Sai Baba in a social media post, expressing his hope that “the wisdom of this great teacher will continue to illuminate us in the mission of building a homeland of love, peace and high spirituality.”

Rodríguez visited Sai Baba’s ashram in southern India as recently as 2024. She said during her first presidential media briefing last month that the Venezuelan people faced “a new moment where coexistence, mutual respect, and recognition of others allow for the construction and building of a new spirituality.”

Rodríguez also said in an interview with the organization's official channel during a 2023 visit that she still feels the guru's presence in trying times.

“Many times, when I was in danger, I felt Baba with me, my family and also with my country,” she said. “He is always with us, teaching us … and showing a path for peace and love.”

The U.S. military seized Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, from their Caracas home Jan. 3 in a stunning operation that landed them in New York to face federal drug trafficking charges. Maduro called himself “a man of God” while pleading not guilty.

After Maduro’s capture, several news outlets in India published a 2005 photo that shows him and his wife seated at the feet of the Sai Baba, who had distinctive black, curly locks and wore a long saffron robe. It has been widely reported that Maduro displayed a large, framed photograph of Sai Baba in his office at Miraflores Palace in Caracas, alongside portraits of Latin America's liberator Simón Bolívar and former Venezuelan leader Hugo Chávez.

Maduro, who declared a national day of mourning upon Sai Baba’s death in 2011, marked the 2025 centenary by hailing the spiritual leader as “a being of light” and a “beacon of unconditional love, selfless service and truth.”

Videos posted by Sai Baba’s organization, which is still active and ubiquitous in India, have shown Rodríguez visiting its ashram and headquarters in Puttaparthi, a town in the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh. During visits in 2023 and 2024, she can be seen praying at the sanctum, the guru’s final resting place, which devotees believe radiates spiritual energy. She can also be seen interacting with R.J. Rathnakar, Sai Baba's nephew who currently heads the organization.

The Associated Press’ efforts to reach the Sai Baba organization in India and Venezuela for comment went unanswered.

Sai Baba’s organization came to Venezuela long before Maduro and other politicians sought out the guru. The organization opened its first center in Caracas on Aug. 22, 1974, started by Arlette Meyer, a devotee who wrote books in Spanish about the guru. In her apartment, she and a few other members sang devotional hymns and studied Sai Baba’s teachings — the organization’s first such center in Latin America.

The organization in Venezuela now appears to be centered in Abejales, a town in the state of Táchira, about 465 miles (750 kilometers) west of Caracas, where it runs a “Human Values School.” The town is the birthplace of former lawmaker Walter Márquez, who has maintained close ties with Sai Baba before and after serving as Venezuela’s ambassador to India. Márquez was honored by the Sai Baba organization in Venezuela late last year. Some estimates put the number of Sai Baba followers in Venezuela at about 200,000 and millions globally.

Faith in Venezuela is not monolithic, said Andrew Chesnut, professor of religious studies at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond. He said while Catholicism is still dominant, it coexists comfortably with evangelical Protestantism, Afro-Indigenous traditions and transnational religious figures, without requiring formal conversion or exclusive allegiance.

“This syncretic religious ecology helps explain how Nicolás Maduro can describe himself as a devotee of Sri Sathya Sai Baba while simultaneously cultivating close relationships with evangelical leaders who operate within a very different theological universe,” he said.

Religion is invoked rhetorically by Venezuelan politicians, rather than to dictate policy or shape laws, Chesnut said. Encounters with figures like Sai Baba “carry symbolic and performative weight rather than serving as drivers of political ideology or decision-making,” he said.

Sathya Sai Baba, who was born Ratnakaram Sathyanarayana Raju, claimed to be the reincarnation of Shirdi Sai Baba, a guru revered by Hindus and Muslims, who died in 1918. Sathya Sai Baba became popular in India and worldwide in the 1970s and 1980s as word spread of his miraculous abilities to materialize objects such as rings, necklaces and sacred ash. He is believed to have performed spontaneous healings and resurrections.

Sai Baba encouraged his followers to practice their own religions, often saying that God is one and that all paths led to the same truth. He was known for sayings that reflected his message of unity and service: “Love All, Serve All” and “Help Ever, Hurt Never.”

The guru was known for interacting with devotees, meeting them individually or in groups. Though he traveled just once outside India — in the 1960s to East Africa — the movement became global, establishing nearly 2,000 nondenominational centers in 120 countries, including 200 in the U.S, according to the organization's website.

Among his followers are Bollywood actors, cricketers, prominent business leaders and millions of average Indians who flock to Sai Baba centers for worship, prayer and singing bhajans or devotional songs, many in praise of the guru.

Sai Baba faced intense criticism from some corners, particularly rationalists and scientists, who accused him of faking his miraculous materializations. He also faced criminal allegations including accusations of fraud, sexual abuse and murder, but was never charged with any of those crimes. His followers dismissed those allegations as slander and propaganda.

Sai Baba still has ardent devotees like Dr. Samuel Sandweiss, a retired psychiatrist based in Southern California, who visited the guru nearly 80 times since 1972. He said he has seen the guru materialize everything from sacred ash called vibhuti to several golden rings.

Sandweiss is not surprised that Maduro and other Venezuelan leaders followed Sai Baba.

“I’ve seen him with all kinds of people from all walks of life — from the lowest to the highest,” he said. “His main message was that love transcends all religion and unites us all.”

Associated Press writers Jorge Rueda, in Caracas, Venezuela, and Sheikh Saaliq, in New Delhi, India, contributed to this report.

Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

FILE - Devotees attend the last rites ceremony of Indian religious leader Sathya Sai Baba at the Prasanthi Nilayam Ashram in Puttaparti, India, April 27, 2011. (AP Photo/Aijaz Rahi, File)

FILE - Indian spiritual leader Sathya Sai Baba, right, receives a flower from a girl at a function to meet his devotees in New Delhi, India, April 10, 2010. (AP Photo/Mustafa Quraishi, File)

The Virginia Supreme Court on Friday struck down a voter-approved Democratic congressional redistricting plan, delivering another major setback to the party in a nationwide battle against Republicans for an edge in this year's midterm elections.

The court ruled 4-3 that the state's Democratic-led legislature violated procedural requirements when it placed the constitutional amendment on the ballot to authorize the mid-decade redistricting. Voters narrowly approved the amendment April 21, but the court's ruling renders the results of that vote meaningless.

Writing for the majority, Justice D. Arthur Kelsey wrote that the legislature submitted the proposed constitutional amendment to voters “in an unprecedented manner.”

“This violation irreparably undermines the integrity of the resulting referendum vote and renders it null and void," he wrote.

Democrats had hoped to win as many as four additional U.S. House seats under Virginia's redrawn U.S. House map as part of an attempt to offset Republican redistricting done elsewhere at the urging of President Donald Trump. That ruling, combined with a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision severely weakening the Voting Rights Act, has supercharged the Republicans' congressional gerrymandering advantage heading into this year's midterm elections.

Richard Hudson, chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee said the ruling was another sign of GOP momentum heading into the midterms.

"We’re on offense, and we’re going to win,” he said in a statement.

Don Scott, the Democratic speaker of the Virginia House of Delegates, said Democrats respect the court’s opinion but lamented that it overturned the will of the voters: “They voted YES because they wanted to fight back against the Trump power grab.”

Suzan DelBene, chairwoman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, criticized the court majority for what she said was a decision that “cast aside the will of the voters,” but she said the people will have the final say.

“In November, they will, and they’ll power Democrats to the House majority,” she said in a statement.

Legislative voting districts typically are redrawn once a decade after each census to account for population changes. But Trump started an unusual flurry of mid-decade redistricting last year when he encouraged Republican officials in Texas to redraw districts in a bid to win several additional U.S. House seats and hold on to their party's narrow majority in the midterm elections.

California responded with new voter-approved districts drawn to Democrats' advantage, and Utah's top court imposed a new congressional map that also helps Democrats. Meanwhile, Republicans stand to gain from new House districts passed in Florida, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio and Tennessee. They could add even more after the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in the Voting Rights Act case, which has prompted some other Republican states to consider redrawing their maps in time for this year’s elections.

Virginia currently is represented in the U.S. House by six Democrats and five Republicans who were elected from districts imposed by a court after a bipartisan redistricting commission failed to agree on a map after the 2020 census. The new districts could have given Democrats an improved chance to win all but one of the state's 11 congressional seats.

The Supreme Court's majority was critical of the state’s redrawing of the congressional maps to benefit one political party. Those justices noted that 47% of the state’s voters supported GOP congressional candidates in 2024 but the new map could result in Democrats making up 91% of the state’s House delegation.

Under the Democratic-drawn map, five districts would have been anchored in the Democratic stronghold of northern Virginia, including one stretching out like a lobster to consume Republican-leaning rural areas. Revisions to four other districts across Richmond, southern Virginia and Hampton Roads would have diluted the voting power of conservative blocs in those areas. And a reshaped district in parts of western Virginia would have lumped together three Democratic-leaning college towns to offset other Republican voters.

The state Supreme Court’s seven justices are appointed by the state legislature, which has toggled back and forth between Democratic, Republican and split control over recent years. Legal experts say the body doesn’t have a set ideological profile

The case before the court focused not on the shape of the new districts but rather on the process the General Assembly used to authorize them.

Because the state’s redistricting commission was established by a voter-approved constitutional amendment, lawmakers had to propose an amendment to redraw the districts. That required approval of a resolution in two separate legislative sessions, with a state election sandwiched in between, to place the amendment on the ballot.

The legislature’s initial approval of the amendment occurred last October — while early voting was underway but before it concluded on the day of the general election. The legislature’s second vote on the amendment occurred after a new legislative session began in January. Lawmakers also approved a separate bill in February laying out the new districts, subject to voter approval of the constitutional amendment.

Judicial arguments focused on whether the legislature’s initial approval of the amendment came too late, because early voting already had begun for the 2025 general election.

Attorney Matthew Seligman, who defended the legislature, argued that the “election” should be defined narrowly to mean the Tuesday of the general election. In that case, the legislature’s first vote on the redistricting amendment occurred before the election and was constitutional, he told judges.

But, the Supreme Court said in its ruling, “this view appears to be wholly unprecedented in Virginia’s history.”

An attorney for the plaintiffs, Thomas McCarthy, argued that an “election” should be interpreted to cover the entire period during which people can cast ballots, which lasts several weeks in Virginia. If that’s the case, he told justices, then the legislature’s initial endorsement of the redistricting amendment came too late to comply with the state constitution.

The Supreme Court agreed with that argument, writing: “The General Assembly passed the proposed constitutional amendment for the first time well after voters had begun casting ballots during the 2025 general election.”

By the time lawmakers initially endorsed the constitutional amendment, statewide voters already had cast more than 1.3 million ballots in the general election, about 40% of the total votes ultimately cast, the court said.

The Supreme Court’s ruling affirms a decision by a judge in rural Tazewell County, in southwestern Virginia. The court had placed a hold on that ruling and allowed the redistricting vote to proceed before hearing arguments on the case.

In the dissent to Friday's ruling, Chief Justice Cleo Powell said the election for the purpose of considering the amendment does not include the early voting period.

“The majority’s definition creates an infinite voting loop that appears to have no established beginning,” she wrote, “only a definitive end: Election Day.”

Attorney Matthew Seligman, representing Democratic state legislators, speaks with the media following a hearing on new congressional maps before the state Supreme Court in Richmond, Va., on Monday, April 27, 2026. (AP Photo/Allen G. Breed)

State Senate Minority Leader Ryan McDougle, center, speaks outside the Supreme Court of Virginia after arguments were heard in a redistricting-related case at the court in Richmond, Va., on Monday, April 27, 2026. (AP Photo/Allen G. Breed)