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At Large
Benedict’s Cuban Opportunity
Even a small gesture by the Pope would embolden Cuba’s dissidents.
When Pope Benedict XVI arrives today at Antonio Maceo Airport in Santiago de Cuba on Cuba’s eastern edge, he will find a nation much in need of the “new evangelization” that is at the heart of his pontificate.
The Vatican and the Cuban Catholic Church have repeatedly stressed the pastoral, that is to say apolitical, purpose of the pope’s visit. Though a majority of Cubans identify as Catholic, very few — roughly 5% — practice their faith. As one Cuba watcher put it to me, “Catholicism pervades Cuba, but the practice of Catholicism does not.”
But Benedict’s pilgrimage, the first papal visit to Cuba since John Paul II’s 1998 trip, also provides an opportunity for the pope to speak up for and encourage the country’s weary dissident community, many of whom criticize the Church for being overly conciliatory toward the Marxist regime.
On Friday, Benedict perhaps offered a preview of his message during the three-day visit. “Today it is evident that Marxist ideology in the way it was conceived no longer corresponds to reality,” Benedict told reporters accompanying him on his flight from Rome to Mexico, where he spent the weekend. “In this way we can no longer respond and build a society. New models must be found with patience and in a constructive way.”
Benedict added that the Church wants “to help in the spirit of dialogue to avoid trauma and to help bring about a just and fraternal society.”
For its part, the Cuban government sees the pope’s visit as a chance to bolster its withering credibility. A contact in Havana tells me there are signs and billboards across the city welcoming the pope. The state-run newspaper, Granma, has featured stories promoting the visit for weeks.
The relationship between the Church and the Cuban government hasn’t been this strong since the early days of the regime. When Fidel Castro seized power in 1959, he announced that his revolution was informed by Christian principles.
This prompted the Franciscan journal La Quincena to praise the revolution as a “decisive and transcendental stage for Cuba” and to state that the “doctrine of the Fidelista revolution can be characterized as social-Christian.” The archbishop of Santiago de Cuba even held a mass to celebrate the revolutionary triumph.
It was not long, though, before Castro had declared himself a Marxist-Leninist and Cuba a socialist state. He began closing Catholic schools, killing and expelling priests and other religious, and discriminating against Catholics seeking state and university employment.
The Castro regime barred Catholics from joining the Communist Party, the country’s sole political party, and religious instruction was abolished in the new government-run schools as the Church was portrayed as an enemy of the poor. The Church was prohibited from printing independent newspapers, from establishing schools and hospitals and from training or importing priests and other religious.
After the Soviet Union’s demise in the late 1980s, Cubans lost the massive oil and food subsidies they had received from their communist brethren. Desperate to rehabilitate its image, the regime began reaching out to the Catholic Church. Castro met with Pope John Paul II at the Vatican in 1996 and invited him to visit Cuba.
Castro also began making concessions to Cuba’s Catholics, lifting the ban on practicing Catholics joining the party and amending the constitution to turn a previously atheist Cuba into an officially secular one.
In 1998, John Paul II became the first pope to set foot in Cuba, prompting more concessions, including the release of more than 300 political prisoners.
Since then, the government has given the church greater freedom to do its pastoral work, import priests and renovate its churches. A new seminary was even opened, in 2010, the first since the revolution.
But Cuba has made no real progress in recognizing the basic human and political rights of its citizens. Cuba is still designated “not free” by Freedom House and is still among its “worst of the worst” countries and one of “the world’s most repressive regimes.” According to Human Rights Watch, sham trials, arbitrary arrests, inhumane imprisonment, and harassment of dissidents’ families are widespread.
About the Author
Daniel Allott is a writer in Washington, D.C.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (16) | Leave a comment
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Appleby| 3.26.12 @ 8:37AM
"Today it is evident that Marxist ideology IN THE WAY IT WAS CONCEIVED no longer corresponds to reality," Benedict told reporters accompanying him on his flight from Rome to Mexico, where he spent the weekend. "In this way we can no longer respond and build a society. New models must be found with patience and in a constructive way."
This sounds to me like His Holiness is saying that what we need is not democracy, but a different formulation of Marxism.
The Pope must go where his flock needs him; however, he must be on his guard for the overeager Marxists who are waiting to find vindication in his words. This is what Marxists do best, even in the USA where they call themselves Progressives.
RCV| 3.26.12 @ 3:46PM
No, what he is saying is that Marxism was premised on a view of human behavior that reality has shown us is wholly unrealizable.
Mimi| 3.26.12 @ 12:25PM
A death-bed conversion of Castro could change the Western-Hemisphere. !
Maybe we should pray for a TWOSOME with Hugo Chavez!
Mimi| 3.26.12 @ 12:32PM
Daniel...Good job your articles get hundreds of comments! TAS posters do a great job also.
God Bless the aging Pope Benedict...though highly intellectual ... his words contain simple messeges of truth and what is most important to all mankind. Welcome to the Americas!
john dubose| 3.26.12 @ 3:43PM
The picture that leads this story tells a more poingant story than any of the words. Cuba can not let modern cars into the country because only a handfull of very powerful people could pay for them and the people would have it rubbed in their faces just how backward a country Castro has made it.
RCV| 3.26.12 @ 3:48PM
The US trade embargo is what prevents importation of modern American cars and auto parts into Cuba.
Mike Hawk| 3.26.12 @ 10:44PM
Get real, the average Cuban couldn't buy a car if he wanted. Nobody but the CP officials have anything resembling money and they are the ones driving the '48 Chevy.
JmsA| 3.27.12 @ 12:50AM
And the embargo, and what remains of it, remains in place because of Fidel Castro and his thieving, murderous clan. Don't blame the U.S. Blame the socialist tyrant.
RCV| 3.27.12 @ 12:55AM
I'm not "blaming" the embargo. My point was simply that Cubans love American cars -- anyone who's been there can attest to that fact -- and if they could get them, they would find a way to buy them, especially in Havana.
JmsA| 3.27.12 @ 5:12PM
Okay. You're suggesting, intimating, insinuating, positing, etc., the embargo is the cause of Cubans not getting American cars/parts, which in any case, the regular Cuban cannot obtain on his/her measely $20.00 monthly salary, anyway. You haven't lived it, so you don't get it. Not withstanding the regular Cuban's ingenuity to keep running old American cars, not having regular and personal modes of transportation is part of the all controlling paradigm that is the "Cuban Revolution." Just as is struggling all day to put something on the table for dinner, and clothing your children, per rations and whatnot, as well as providing them with proper medical care in a grossly substandard system, as opposed to the highly touted by some useful idiots, medical facilitities only available to tourists and Cuban government elites. Castro and socialism are the culprit, not the U.S.
JmsA| 3.27.12 @ 5:12PM
Mean to write: culprits.
cicero| 3.26.12 @ 4:05PM
The Pope appears to be very careful in the formulation of his messages to the countries that are under Marxist rule. It is noteworthy that there has never been an internal revolt in Cuba. That could be because the military and police back the dictator, and the people have no weapons. For the Pope to encourage revolution would only put the blood of the people on his hands, as they have no chance of success. The only hope is that the tyrants will die soon, and the successor will either be true to the people, or will invite a coup that may return some semblance of freedom to the citizens. Their only hope is a revolution in the ranks of the military and the police.
JmsA| 3.27.12 @ 12:44AM
"It is noteworthy that there has never been an internal revolt in Cuba."
Sorry, but you're wrong. There has been continued revolt, in any manner possible ever since the communist takeover of the island. And thousands upon thousands have paid for it with their lives and loss of freedom, for decades in many instances (please refer to Dr. Oscar Biscet).
There was also, from 1959 to 1966, armed rebellion in El Escambray mountains in central Cuba, by approximately 5,000 peasants and others, many of whom former revolutionaries. It took tens of thousands of FAR (Revolutionary Armed Forces) troops, equiped and led by eastern block and former Spanish republican cadres the better part of six years to finally subdue them. In interesting aside, these anti-socialist rebels had been at the ready near the City of Trinidad, where the orignal Bay of Pigs invasion had been planned to take place, only to have the CIA/Kennedy administration change the landing site to the swampy Bay of Pigs, impractably distant from the rebels.
Your comment that the commies have all the weapons, is correct, and they don't mind using them. Cuban army platoons march through the cities, fully armed and chanting at full throat pro-revolutionary slogans, explicitly threatening harsh measures against anyone even thinking of acts against the revolution. And don't forget the acts of repudiation, whereupon the local CDR (Committee for the Defense of the Revolution) in every block can mobilize a mob of thugs and viciously attack anyone perceived a threat to the revolution, often times also at the command of higher ups in the Cuban government. Sound familiar? That's why the prisons are full of political prisoners of conscience, usually under false charges of petty larceny, etc.
The death of one tyrant in Cuba will not make much difference anytime soon. His brother remains in power and alongside him, the military which runs everything for the Castro clan.
POST American| 3.27.12 @ 2:44AM
--------Side op of a fake op ---'90's Show' style------
No more ----no less.
resistance| 3.28.12 @ 8:22AM
Oh, there is so a very active Resistance movement on the Island. The trouble (or perhaps their chief strength) is that they fervently believe in non-violent means of revolt.
I beg of anyone who cares to support the dissidents. Speak up on their behalf if you can, reload their cell phones. Read their blogs (http://translatingcuba.com). Can you translate Spanish into any other language? Come join us at http://hemosoido.com. Sometimes the best weapon is simply world opinion. If the truth is disseminated about what ordinary Cuban life is like, perhaps the world may become disgusted enough to take their displeasure home to Castro II.
@JmsA: It is true that the "death of one tyrant ... will not make much difference anytime soon." But the death of the *right two* tyrants? That just may (maybe) open the floodgates. Ojalá. On that day, the Cuban people will need massive humanitarian assistance. It is our duty, as citizens of the free world, to see to it that it is received and applied as needed.
The Cuban people have suffered a long time for nothing. The "average Cuban" (whatever that is) lives in substandard housing, and is starving. Until this tyranny is overturned, there is no way for us to help them. I pray for its prompt demise.
Christ is King| 3.28.12 @ 12:20PM
Praise God, Jesus Christ is LORD!
tp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Il2whd6TLA0&feature=youtu.be