VATICAN CITY — On Christmas Eve, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, second-in-command to the pope and a longtime diplomatic mediator, urgently summoned Brian Burch, the U.S. ambassador to the Holy See, to press for details on America’s plans in Venezuela, according to government documents obtained by The Washington Post.

Would the United States target only drug traffickers, he asked, or was the Trump administration really after regime change? Nicolás Maduro had to go, Parolin conceded, according to the documents, but he urged the U.S. to offer him a way out.