Pope Francis and his Visit to Cuba: A Conversation

Miami's Archbishop Thomas Wenski and Dagoberto Valdés discuss the visit of Pope Francis to Cuba

Archbishop Thomas Wenski and Dagoberto Valdés

This morning had the pleasure to attend a gathering to discuss the recent visit of the Pontiff to Cuba at St. Thomas University. Unexpectedly the press was on hand and a reporter for El Nuevo Herald immediately asked me for a comment, even before the event had started. I explained that I had come to listen, but he insisted that I provide a comment on my opinion on the Pope's visit to Cuba and I expressed my disappointment in the silence surrounding the repression of dissidents during his visit, including of those invited to meet Pope Francis who were prevented from doing so twice by Cuban regime officials.  According to a tally prepared by journalist Marc Masferrer, at least 238 Cuban dissidents were arrested during the Pope's visit to Cuba. Three Cuban dissidents who were able to to get within earshot of Pope Francis before being tackled by Cuban state security remain jailed and the Human Rights Foundation is calling for their release. 

Taken from Dagoberto's power point presentation

Archbishop Wenski made some brief remarks on the visit and apologized for the hoarseness in his voice acquired with the heavy travel itinerary with Pope Francis first in Cuba and then later in the United States. Dagoberto Valdés Hernández, founder of Convivencia magazine and the Civic Education Center in Pinar del Rio gave a detailed analysis of what went on during the visit and the themes touched on by Pope Francis and the impact the visit was having in Cuba. Below are video excerpts from Dagoberto's presentation (In Spanish).

Nine Days of Prayer to Undo the Knots for a Free Cuba

“Change Swords of Steel into Swords of Truth” – Bishop Agustin A. Roman, Oakdale Federal Detention Center , November 29, 1987

Our Lady of Charity

In nine days Pope Francis will be arriving in Cuba. This visit will be taking place in an environment of rising repression and efforts to deepen divisions between the Catholic Church and Cuban democrats. In Cuba the Feast Day was observed by the Castro regime with over 140 detentions of dissidents in order to prevent them participating in religious services. Controversies have emerged in recent months with Cardinal Ortega and some local parish priests have barred women dressed in white from attending Mass calling on them to wear clothing of a different color. This is due to pressures arising from a civic movement in which the women dress in white and nonviolently demand that Cuba's political prisoners be released and the legal system changed in order to end the practice of imprisoning people for exercising their rights.

The Church in Cuba is the one institution, outside of the dissident movement, that is independent of the communist regime. It has been subjected to the infiltration of its institutions, repression and hostility for decades. In 2012 Catholic priest Jose Conrado and protestant minister Mario Felix engaged in a dialogue with Antonio Rodiles on the role of the Christian Church in totalitarian Cuba and the challenges still faced. In the diaspora Bishop Agustin Roman offered an overview of the Cuban dissident movement in 2006.

Within this context the Archdiocese of Miami is calling for a prayer action. Archbishop Thomas Wenski asked the South Florida community at the end of the Solemn Mass on the Feast Day for Our Lady of Charity on September 8, 2015 to prepare for Pope Francis’s visit to Cuba with a novena(nine days of prayer) to the Mother of God under her title of “Desatanudos” (Undoer of Knots). This devotion originated in Germany and is a favorite of Pope Francis.

Daily prayer:

Our Lady, Mother of God and our Mother,
intercessor and advocate in all our spiritual and material needs,
we ask that you untie all the knots that imprison our Cuban people,
the knots of despair, of fear, of loss of God and loss of the values of the faith;
help us break the ties of suspicion, of indifference,
and the sin of not seeing our brother in the other;
of expecting more from the powers of this world than from the strength of God.
We beg you to help us untie, along with you,
all the knots of evil, injustice and sin. Amen.

“Cubans have always been united, regardless of race, class or views, along the same path: the path that leads us to El Cobre.” * 

The concepts and language of human rights first emerged out of the Catholic Church in the Middle Ages and the idea that human rights are universal out of the Salamanca School at the end of the fifteenth century. In 1550 Bishop Bartolomé De Las Casas enunciated this principle:

“All the races of the world are men, and of all men and of each individual there is but one definition, and this is that they are rational. All have understanding and will and free choice, as all are made in the image and likeness of God . . . Thus the entire human race is one.”

Four centuries later when nations states twice failed to keep the peace plunging the world into global conflagrations of wholesale slaughter in two terrible world wars that involved genocides, in 1948 the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was drafted and signed by the nations of the world. The document is neither capitalist or communist but informed by the Catholic philosophy of Jacques Maritain and was an initiative led by Latin America.

There are human failings of the Divine Church. Hilaire Belloc best described these failings of the Catholic Church as “an institute run with such knavish imbecility that if it were not the work of God it would not last a fortnight.” This is also why, I believe, the Archbishop is calling on Catholics to pray over nine days to prepare Pope Francis's trip to Cuba.

Let us pray to the Mother of God that His will be done.

September 8: Feast Day for Cachita and 27th anniversary of Christian Liberation Movement's founding

"Today, 27 years ago, my parents with a group of friends founded the Christian Liberation Movement congratulations to all." - Rosa María Payá, over twitter on September 8, 2015

Jesús Mustafá Felipe at Solemn Mass for Our Lady of Charity

Today is the Feast Day for Cachita, Our Lady of Charity. In Miami, thousands of Cuban exiles gathered at the University of Miami's Bank United Center in prayer in a Solemn Mass presided over by Archbishop Thomas Wenski and broadcast around the world on EWTN and to Cuba over Radio/TV Marti. In Cuba, 140 Cubans were arrested to stop them celebrating the Feast Day at Mass at the Lady of Caridad del Cobre Church in Eastern Cuba. Other reports of repression and detentions have been reported.

Today also marks the 27th anniversary of the formation of the Christian Liberation Movement that began a new phase of nonviolent civic struggle for national reconciliation in Cuba. The Christian Liberation Movement emerged out of a Catholic lay movement in a Catholic parish in Havana's neighborhood of El Cerro.

Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas described how the Christian Liberation Movement, a democratic opposition movement, came into existence and explained how it was related to the birth of his first child, Oswaldo José. It was then that Oswaldo and his wife Ofelia decided:

“When our first child was going to be born, we have three children, we said that our children cannot live in a country without liberty and we are not going to another country to seek freedom. Therefore we have to fight for our children to live free here in Cuba and everyone else's children and their parents too.”    

Oswaldo José was born on February 17, 1988 and the Christian Liberation Movement (MCL) was founded that same year on September 8, 1988. It is a movement born out of optimism for the future and it has endured and continues to persevere for Cuba's freedom using nonviolent means.  Today is a day of prayer and celebration.


 

The Legacy of Bishop Agustin Roman

“Change Swords of Steel into Swords of Truth” – Bishop Agustin A. Roman, Oakdale Federal Detention Center , November 29, 1987

Mass for Bishop Agustin Roman

On Sunday, April 14, 2013 at 3:00pm at La Ermita de la Caridad we saw in action during Mass how Cubans are one people united by the Virgin of Charity or as she is affectionately known "Cachita." Several hundred Cubans came together to remember and pray for Bishop Agustin Roman at a Mass officiated by Arch-Bishop Thomas Wenski to observe the one year of his passing.

Archbishop Wenski spoke about the life of Bishop Agustin Roman and how, like Peter, he was a fisher of men and then went onto explain how the late Bishop had planned to be fishing in Cuban waters but forced at gun point to board the Covadonga and go into exile to fish in Chilean and American waters. Arch-Bishop Thomas Wenski spoke about the origins of La Ermita de la Caridad:

"As Jesus Himself told St. Peter that someone would take him where he did not want to go. Father Aleido had to allow himself to be guided by the hands of God who called him to be not only a disciple but missionary - first in Chile and then here in Miami where by the initiative of the bishop at the time, Archbishop Coleman Carroll, built this chapel to the glory of God and the Virgin Mother of Jesus, and for the spiritual good of the Cuban exile. It was built by the sea whose waters also wash the shores of Cuba. Thus, we see ourselves how God's ways are inscrutable but are providential paths."

One of the last projects  Bishop Agustin Roman presided over was the construction of a small malecón inspired by the one in Havana just behind the La Ermita.

A few days ago Yoani Sanchez made the pilgrimage there and today Rosa Maria Payá and her brother Oswaldo Payá Acevedo took part in the Mass for Bishop Agustin Roman presenting a Cuban flag while Rafael Peñalver presented the plaque of a shiv taken from the prison riot that Bishop Roman ended nonviolently.

"But for the Cuban people, here in exile and on the island, Bishop Agustin Roman occupies a place of grateful honor. And in these days I have received from the Bishops of Cuba solidarity messages on the occasion of the Mass, and a very special thank you to the children of the late Oswaldo Paya, Rosa Maria and Osvaldo, present here today in this Chapel.

Augustine Roman was a son of Cuba - that country that José Martí described as "agony and duty." And if it is true that - as Luz y Caballeros - Father Felix Varela taught the Cuban people how to think, Bishop Roman, the Felix Valera of our time, taught us to pray, and pray unceasingly for the freedom of Cuba.

Maria Rosa, I know that your dad and Bishop Roman mutually admired each other. The times I met your father in Cuba he always called on me to greet Bishop Roman in his name. (And he also told me how happy he was when Father Rumin was appointed rector of the chapel). I hope that when you go back to Cuba that you tell Cubans on the island that despite the bitter divisions Cubans remain one people. May we continue to pray that "To Jesus through Mary charity unites us."

Bishop Agustin Roman never forgot his Cuban roots and maintained contact with the island and with many families there such as the Payá family. He also continued to pray for the freedom of Cuba and of Cuba’s political prisoners.

Father Rumin, Oswaldo Payá Acevedo, ArchBishop Wenski, Rosa Maria Payá

 Bishop Roman confronted those who systematically violated human rights and promoted hatred for the love of power with the power of love found in the Gospel. Arch-Bishop Thomas Wenski explained it in his homily:

"It is true that the world lives threatened by weapons of mass destruction, we Catholics in the rosary have a weapon of mass conversion. The response of Bishop Roman to the ideologies of hatred was the gospel of love. To a people abused and badly led by men consumed by the love of power, Bishop Roman proposed another way, the path of the power of love."

 The best way to conclude this entry are with the thoughts of Agustin Roman on the subject of love and charity within the Cuban context as he expressed them back in 2006:

Charity, that is love of God and of our brothers, because we have already seen too much the fruits of hate in our people. Because charity is what God wanted for us, sent to us over the sea the image of the Mother of his beloved Son under the inspiring nickname: the Mother of Charity, Mother Love, Mother of the country. If what we do for Cuba, we do not do for love, better not do it.

If all of us who want the good of the nation, of the important internal dissident movement and the persevering of exile arm ourselves with these virtues, we will be effective. If we are committed to not let personalism, or the passions dilute them, we will have won. If we keep them and transmit them to all our people, we will have secured for Cuba a happy future.

Cuba: The Continuing Tragedy

Cuba's Prisoners of Conscience

Rescue crews at plane crash site in Cuba

In the midst of mourning for the 68 passengers who died this past Thursday in a plane crash in Central Cuba we must not forget another ongoing tragedy that continues to unfold. Despite a pledge to free all the prisoners of conscience arrested in 2003 the Cuban dictatorship has not fulfilled its promise.

Meeting between representatives of Catholic Church and Cuban dictatorship

According to the agreement reached with the Catholic Church on July 7, 2010 the Cuban regime pledged that "the 47 remaining prisoners of those who were arrested in 2003, will be released and may leave the country." The agreement went on to specify that the prisoners would be released within "three to four months from now." The four month mark has been reached and 13 prisoners of conscience arrested in 2003 are still in prison, apparently because they want to stay in Cuba.

Rafael Ibarra Roque, unjustly imprisoned for 14 years

A fourteenth prisoner of conscience, Rafael Ibarra Roque, who has served 14 years of a 20 year prison sentence was offered his freedom conditioned upon going into exile which he refused and denounced as blackmail.

Furthermore, Miami's Archbishop Thomas Wenski returned from Cuba with sobering news. Raul Castro disapproved of Archbishop Wenski's statement in the El Nuevo Herald that the July 7 agreement with the Cuban Catholic Church was a step towards greater civil society participation in Cuba.

Orlando Zapata Tamayo

The bottom line is that it was the sacrifice of Orlando Zapata Tamayo combined with the brutal assaults on the Ladies in White that led to both national and international pressures being brought to bear on the dictatorship that forced the regime to the negotiating table with the Catholic Church in July 2010.

Ladies in White

Anatoli Marchenko, the Soviet dissident who died on hunger strike in 1986, was correct in his observation with regards to the Soviet Union when he said: "I am convinced that publicity is the sole effective means of combating the evil and lawlessness which is rampant in my country today." Sadly, it appears to apply to Cuba today.

Aung San Suu Kyi

Also, today in Burma (Myanmar) sham "elections" are being held in a desperate attempt by the military junta (dictatorship) to legitimize itself, but thankfully the world is not buying into the lie. In honor of Aung San Suu Kyi, the last actual democratically elected president still under house arrest, remember her words for Burma and also apply them to Cuba: 'please use your liberty to promote ours'.