April 18, 2008, - 10:09 am
Ex-Cuban Political Prisoner: Pope, Vatican Enabling Cuban Totalitarianism
By Debbie Schlussel
**** SCROLL DOWN FOR UPDATE ****
Although I am not Catholic, one of my heroes–Armando Valladares–is. Valladares, author of the moving, must-read “Against All Hope: A Memoir of Life in Castro’s Gulag,” has in important piece in today’s Wall Street Journal.
He writes about the Vatican’s decades-long enabling of Castro’s torture and oppression of Catholics (and other Cubans). Sadly, under Pope Benedict XVI, that repression and enabling continues.
In the late ’80s, when I worked on Capitol Hill during college, I had the memorable opportunity to hear this very inspirational, brave, heroic man–Valladares–speak and to meet him. The unspeakable torture he endured for over two decades in Cuban prison, merely for expressing mild distaste with Communism, gives him an important–but, sadly, not unique–platform from which to criticize the Vatican’s blind eye to repression and persecution of Catholics (and so many others) in Cuba. In his book, Valladares wrote of how his Christian faith enabled him to survive and get through it all.
Today he is shocked that such prominent Christian leaders turn the other cheek while their followers are oppressed in Cuba:
The Catholic Church has taken a hardline position against right-wing dictatorships. But in Cuba, the Church has been silent – or worse – ever since 1960, when Fidel Castro expelled hundreds of Catholic priests because they alerted their parishioners of the communist danger surfacing in government circles.
In one especially shameful episode in the 1980s, Ventura, Cipriano and Eugenio Garc??a Marin and their mother entered the nunciature in Havana to ask for political asylum. Two days later they saw several priests get out of a black limousine. They were special troops from Castro’s political police who entered the Holy See’s diplomatic mission with the authorization and complicity of the pope’s diplomats in Havana. The three brothers were executed, and their mother was sentenced to 20 years in prison.
Cardinal Tarsicio Bertone’s visit to Cuba this February was a different kind of outrage. In statements by the Vatican secretary of state, published by L’Osservatore Romano shortly after the cardinal’s visit, the cardinal is quoted saying, contrary to historical fact, that Cuba’s Catholic Church is not a “persecuted Church.” He also described Cuba’s universities as “renowned centers of higher education.” In reality, they are sophisticated factories of atheism and apostasy. . . .
The Vatican’s diplomatic behavior helps prolong the agony of my sisters and brothers in Cuba, and creates a grave problem of conscience for loyal Cuban Catholics who expect better from the pope. It in no way diminishes their veneration to express respectful disappointment and even disagreement with the Vatican. . . .
Both the pope and President Bush have immense responsibilities before God and the Cuban people.
Read the whole thing.
**** UPDATE: Reader Louis, a Cuban-American, writes:
Great article about the Vatican’s blind eye to Cuba. My parents are from Cuba, and my Father told me how JESUITS helped the revolution! Castro was trained by Jesuit priests when he was younger I believe. . . . So that could be why Rome is silent. If they speak up the truth will come out of yet another travesty they helped. The Jesuits, in general, were so bad in Cuba that my father nearly lost his faith in God.
Definitely a tragedy.
Infiltration of the Catholic church by left-wing activists and homosexuals will eventually destroy all churches from within because people have become more concerned with being “politically correct” than just correct.
eloopd on April 18, 2008 at 11:34 am