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.

About Rosa Maria Payá: Part One

The following text was translated from Rosa Maria's website.

Rosa Maria Payá with her dad

 About Me

by Rosa Maria Payá Acevedo

I was born in Havana in 1989, just before the fall of the Berlin Wall, which exacerbated the hardships in Cuba. We depended on the Soviet Union and its supplies were cut: the Special Period was inaugurated. I had a tough childhood, but my parents, Ofelia Acevedo and Oswaldo Payá , founder of the Christian Liberation Movement and who died in a car crash seven months ago, did the impossible because my two brothers and I did not resent the deficiencies. We were kids, there were things we did not see. The 1990s ushered in a wave of malnutrition in Havana and weekly electricity blackouts were scheduled. The critical years were between 93 and 98, I had not reached ten years of age-but, two decades later, I feel that things have hardly improved. During this time the government banned all Cubans from entry into hotels and public transport worsened: Havana became filled with bicycles. I look at pictures and see my parents very thin because they had to travel 40 kilometers by bicycle every day to go to work. Still, I remember being happy with my brothers. We grew up with the privilege of knowing we could think for ourselves, we learned that since we were children. So in school we had discussions with teachers early and we fell into conflict with them, not with our peers. Our dad would say: you say what you think and then talk to me. Years later we learned that our school was visited by state security. Until now in Cuba the primary or secondary school where thinking is taught is rare. 

I was born as the daughter of a dissident. In 1990 my father had just founded the Christian Liberation Movement and we were a family with Christian values, centered in man and compassion for others. They represented an open challenge on the island. We grew up with values that were never exempt from questioning and became, therefore, controversial and exciting. Such freedom was rare and, as children, we opened the door to complex thought. I was a little over twelve years old the day we learned that my father had won the 2002 Sakharov Prize, awarded by the European Parliament to defenders of human rights in the world. We fell into the euphoria, many people stopped in the street to congratulate him. After that, he was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize five times: in 2002, 2003, 2008, 2010 and 2011. His defense of the Gospel marked us. Today I recognize that sometimes my faith falters because I have seen evil up close, but if I did not have faith, my rights struggle that follows the values of my father, would be much bitterer. 

At five or six years of age we played in the streets of the neighborhood with our friends, that's how life is in Havana. Because of the weather and the lack of places of entertainment, children play in the street and teenagers gather in parks and esplanades. In my childhood no one had new toys. I grew up with used dolls and my friends with discarded used trucks and wooden blocks. From far away we would get more modern games that made us special, because nobody in the neighborhood had something similar. They were gifts from family, my father has six brothers and of these, four were living outside Cuba. They cannot go to their country, not even when my grandmother died could they come. Once, when my seven year old brother, who was very ill, traveled to the United States, he returned with a toy gun with water arrows and set off a children’s revolution in the neighborhood. To me they brought a toy kitchen, I did not know them. 

It was rare that I had a new dress, but on that trip they brought me one and I never forgot it. We dressed in clothes that our uncles sent us from the United States and Spain, had it not been for their help, we would not have survived. So far I only know some of my relatives who live abroad. But family separation is not exclusive to the Payá’s: the majority of Cuban families suffers or has suffered it. The split has left traces in all. I remember, as a child, I dreamed of leaving Cuba. I thought candy never ran out and that there were cuter toys, newer dresses. I was seven and I wanted to go, but I was born into a family that never wanted to leave its land. In recent times I have thought that if we had migrated my dad would not be dead today. He died in July 2012 in a car crash, but in our family we do not believe that the tragedy was accidental. He'd been receiving threats for his commitment to political resistance. My father gave his life defending the rights of all Cubans to live on the land that we were born, that is, after all, the best of homes that we can found. Today I want to live in Cuba, because I know that outside I would always feel foreign and divided. 

Original Spanish text

Rosa María Payá: 'Change' in Cuba is fraud

Text published in The Miami Herald on April 13, 2013

Verbatim

 'Change' in Cuba is fraud 

Moderator Tony Díaz Sánchez introduces Rosa María Payá

Excerpts from remarks by Cuban dissident Rosa María Payá while in Washington on Tuesday to speak to the National Endowment for Democracy:

It would be nice if the Cuban government were making democratic reforms, but that's not true because these reforms have not given human rights to Cuban citizens.

It would be nice if Cubans could travel freely, but that's not true because the government has to allow the persons to obtain their passport and this is conditioned.
 
It would be nice if the economic reforms delivered self-management to citizens, but that's not true because Cubans are not free to do business with anybody at any moment.
 
It would be nice if the Cuban government were opening a transition process, but that's not true because the repression against the members of our movement and the whole opposition has increased.
 
It would be nice if the Cuban government were peaceful and respectful, but that's not true because the state security of this government calls my family's house to say "I'm going to kill you."  

They did it before my father's death and they still do it.

I'm sorry, but things are not nice right now in my country. Although a lot of Cubans are working for real changes -- and this is definitely the nice part.

My father Oswaldo Payá and Harold Cepero dedicated their life to fight for democracy of Cuba.  They were working on effective and peaceful alternatives -- instruments that can be implemented during the transition process.

They were strongly denouncing the "fraud change" that is taking place in the island.

And what is the "fraud change"?

The "fraud change" is this big process in which the Cuban government and its accomplices have developed a series of legal reforms and public messages designed to preserve its power and its authority.

They are trying to sell to the international community false images of opening wide. At the same time, the violent aggression against opposition members and their families has increased.

These new laws not only confirm the government control.  They also maintain the discrimination against Cuban citizens and do not guarantee citizen's rights.

Video streaming by Ustream

Rosa Maria Payá denounces death threats against her and her family.

Rosa Maria Payá holds the Cuban government responsible for whatever may happen to her and her family.

Rosa Maria Payá with Professor Jaime Suchlicki at the University of Miami

“Since the death of my father… it’s been much more evident. It is as is if they want us to know: From chasing my oldest brother while dressed in uniform so that both he and neighbors would see them; to calling at 4am asking for me, terrorizing my grandmother and aunt; to chasing my mother and me while we were leaving Havana creating a state of siege while waiting for the bus. The latest that has taken place, really has me very worried, was a call to the home of my family that says directly, we are going to kill you. This is the same kind of threat made to my father over many years of his life that became more frequent prior to his death. Therefore, yes, I fear for the lives and physical integrity of my family and I hold the government responsible for their physical safety and also for the safety of members of our movement and of the opposition.” … Rosa Maria Payá, April 12, 2013 at the University of Miami.

Above statement is a translated excerpt taken from the video below which is in Spanish.

Remembering Bishop Agustín Román one year later

"The greatest importance of the internal dissident movement in Cuba today, is that it has proven that political action can be consistent with what conscience knows and that is that the force of reason is, and should be more powerful than the reason of force."- Bishop Agustín Román (2006)

Hard to believe it has only been a year since Bishop Agustín Román was called home. His absence has made it feel much longer and a deeper appreciation of his importance to this community and all of us in it.

Over the next few days there will be services held in his honor and prayers both for his eternal repose as well as for his intercession.

Bishop Román once said that "If what we do for Cuba, we do not do for love, better not to do it."  He had a great understanding of what was taking place in the land of his birth and the gift to lay it out in a manner that most could understand.

In the realm of political struggle he was an advocate for nonviolent civil resistance who said that violence was "not be a favored option, much less a practice or method of justifiable struggle."

In 2006 he spoke of the challenges facing Cuba and of the Cuban dissident movement and his observations remain extremely relevant and needed seven years later.