Maduro has met with a priest and a rabbi in a Brooklyn jail, reports say

Nicolás Maduro, 63, the former president of Venezuela, has turned to spirituality and to reading religious and philosophical texts as his main support in prison, the Spanish newspaper La Vanguardia reported, citing US sources. Maduro has been held in a Brooklyn prison since early January, after US special forces, the Delta Force, detained him at his home in Caracas. President Donald Trump ordered his capture.

His interest in religion has grown as his detention has gone on. He has met inside the prison with a priest and with a rabbi, according to The New York Times. The meeting with the rabbi follows statements Maduro had made publicly in the past, in which he said he had Jewish ancestry. He described himself as a descendant of a Sephardic community that emigrated from the Netherlands Antilles to Venezuela in the 20th century. He had shown no practical interest in Judaism before his capture.

6ix9ine: "He has read practically every Bible"

The rapper 6ix9ine, who spent several months alongside Maduro at Brooklyn's Metropolitan Detention Center before being released last spring, spoke about him to the weekly The New Yorker. "He reads any Bible. I don't know if it has something to do with Buddha, but he was reading something. He has read practically every Bible and has been comparing them," the musician said.

Maduro has also lost weight. Before his arrest he followed the paleolithic diet, which seeks to reproduce prehistoric eating patterns, and in recent months he has complained repeatedly about the poor quality of prison food, which has sped up his weight loss.

Cilia Flores's declining health

His wife, Cilia Flores, 70, is in worse condition, according to the Times. Doctors have prescribed nitroglycerin for chest pain, and she has lost two teeth and about 11 kilograms (24 pounds). She spent three months in isolation, and after she was moved to the general population unit she was exposed to pepper spray used to break up a fight between inmates.

Her defense team says she may have had a mild heart attack in July and that she now sleeps three to four hours a day. Her lawyers asked for her pretrial detention to be replaced by house arrest on those medical grounds. The request was denied by Alvin K. Hellerstein, the judge then handling the case, who died in October at 92. Judge Analisa Torres has handled the case since then.

Charges and the government in Venezuela

Maduro is due to stand trial next year on charges that include facilitating the transport of thousands of tons of cocaine to the United States. Flores is named in the same indictment. In Venezuela, the running of the country has fallen to Delcy Rodríguez, the number two in the previous government, who agreed to serve as his successor under Trump's oversight.

Maduro's unorthodox religious profile

Maduro's religious profile was already unorthodox while he was in power. A practicing Catholic, he kept a close relationship with a priest of socialist leanings. He also sought electoral support from Venezuela's growing evangelical community. Along with Flores and Rodríguez, he professed devotion to Sathya Sai Baba, an Indian mystic guru who has since died.