MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Chavez wept and asked God to spare his life during a pre-Easter mass

The Venezuelan leader during the mass held at his home town of Barinas next to his family

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez wept and asked God to spare his life during a pre-Easter Mass in the eve of Good Friday after returning from his latest session of cancer treatment in Cuba.

Very little is known about the 57-year-old populist leader's condition, including even what type of cancer he has. Chavez has undergone three operations in less than a year, and received two sessions of radiation treatment.

He says the latest surgery was successful, that he is recovering well and will be fit to win a new six-year term at an election in October. Yet big questions remain about his future, and on Thursday the strain appeared to show.

In a televised speech to the Catholic service in his home state of Barinas, Chavez cried and his voice broke as he eulogized Jesus, revolutionary fighter Ernesto “Che” Guevara and South American independence hero Simon Bolivar.

“Never forget that we are the children of giants ... I could not avoid some tears,” the former soldier said, his parents and other relatives looking on from the church rows.

“Give me your crown, Jesus. Give me your cross, your thorns so that I may bleed. But give me life, because I have more to do for this country and these people. Do not take me yet,” Chavez added, standing below an image of Jesus with the Crucifix.

In his speech at the Mass, Chavez soon seemed to recover his composure, joking with his brother Adan in the congregation that few people were watching because it was the Easter holiday, when Venezuelans typically hit the country's beaches.

Chavez said he had a lot of faith that his cancer would not return after his first two operations last year - which removed a baseball sized tumour from his pelvis - but it did.

“Today, I have more faith than yesterday,” he said. “Life has been a hurricane ... but a couple of years ago my life began to become not my own anymore,” the president said. “Who said the path of revolution would be easy?”

However Doctor Jose Rafael Marquina a Venezuelan expert who lives in Florida, is a professor at the Nova University and consultant for several Venezuelan intensive care clinics recently revealed that Chavez has a cancerous tumour which has extended to three metastasis, in the liver, suprarenal glands, retroperitoneal space and the bladder”.

This week he added that Chavez return to Venezuela from Cuba was delayed because one of the metastasis had spread to his intestine.