A private Christian school holds what it considers a biblical view of marriage. It welcomes all students, but insists that they adhere to certain beliefs and abstain from conduct that violates those beliefs. Few doubt the sincerity of those beliefs. The school's leaders are seen as strange and offensive to the world, but then again, they know that they will find themselves as aliens and strangers in the world.
This description fits a number of Christian schools confronted today with rapidly changing sexual norms. But the description also would have fit Bob Jones University, a school that barred interracial dating until 2000. And in 1983, that ban cost Bob Jones its tax exemption, in a decision upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court. Even for a relatively small school of a few thousand students, that meant losing millions of dollars. And the government's removal of tax-exempt status had a purpose: one Supreme Court justice described it as "elementary economics: when something becomes more expensive, less of it will be purchased."
The comparison between Bob Jones in 1983 and Christian schools today will strike some as unwarranted. Indeed, there are historical reasons to reject it. The discriminatory practices in Bob Jones were linked to the slavery of African Americans and the Jim Crow South. The 1983 Court decision came within a generation of Brown v. Board of Education, and its legal principles extended to private secondary schools (including "segregationist academies") that resisted racial integration.
There are also significant theological differences between Bob Jones's race-based arguments and arguments that underlie today's sexual conduct restrictions. Those differences are rooted in contested questions about identity, as well as longstanding Christian boundaries for sexual behavior. Gay and lesbian Christians committed to celibacy show that sexual identity and sexual conduct are not always one in the same. But these points are increasingly obscured outside of the church. We see this in the castigation of any opposition to same-sex liberties as bigoted. That kind of language has moved rapidly into mainstream culture. And it is difficult to envision how it would be undone or dialed back.
How should Christians respond to these circumstances? First, we must understand the history from which they emerge. Second, we must understand the legal, social, and political dimensions of the current landscape. Third, and finally, we must recognize that arguments that seem intuitive from within Christian communities will increasingly not make sense to the growing numbers of Americans who are outside the Christian tradition.
Thursday, July 31, 2014
Friday, July 25, 2014
Religious Freedom vs. LGBT Rights? It's More Complicated | Christianity Today
Religious Freedom vs. LGBT Rights? It's More Complicated | Christianity Today
Religious Freedom vs. LGBT Rights? It's More Complicated
The legal context for what's happening at Gordon College, and how Christians can respond despite intense cultural backlash.
Image: Mark Wilson / Getty Images
How We Got Here
Many of the questions today simply were not in play that long ago. For one, governmental regulations have a far wider reach than they did even 100 years ago. We work, play, worship, and live in spaces regulated by government. Just look around the next time you step foot in your local church. Some of the building was probably subsidized through state and federal tax exemptions. Any recent construction likely encountered local zoning ordinances. The certificate of occupancy, fire code compliance, and any food service permits all reflect government regulation. Today, the government, its money, and its laws are everywhere.
We can pin many of these changes on the New Deal, but just as influential were the civil rights era and the battle to end segregation. Civil rights laws extended to what had previously been seen as private spaces and transactions. The laws focused on commercially operated public accommodations, such as transportation, lodging, and restaurants. But they also extended to private schools, neighborhoods, and swimming pools. The reach of these laws was unprecedented—and rightly so. The pervasive impediments to equal citizenship for African Americans have not been seen in any other recent episode in U.S. history. Our country has harmed many people (including my grandparents, who were stripped of their possessions and imprisoned for four years during World War II solely because they were Japanese Americans). But the systemic and structural injustices perpetrated against African Americans—and the extraordinary remedies those injustices warranted—remain in a class of their own.
In less than three decades, the Supreme Court has moved from upholding the criminalizing of gay conduct to affirming gay marriage. The tone of the debates has also shifted.
The legal context surrounding LGBTQ rights has also changed swiftly. In less than three decades, the Supreme Court has moved from upholding the criminalizing of gay conduct to affirming gay marriage. The tone of the debates has also shifted. In 1996, an overwhelming majority of Congress passed the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which was signed into law by President Clinton. Last year, a majority of the Supreme Court concluded that the Act reflected "a bare congressional desire to harm" and that its supporters were motivated by prejudice and spite. These developments are unfolding at breakneck speeds, and will likely affect the laws governing private spaces and transactions.
We also have seen shifts in the law pertaining to the free exercise of religion. The modern religious liberty story begins in 1990, in a case involving Native Americans who lost their jobs for using peyote (a hallucinogenic) for religious reasons. The law prohibiting peyote was generally applicable, meaning it applied to everyone and did not single out religious believers. You couldn't use peyote for either social or religious purposes. The Court decided that the First Amendment provided no special protection against such laws.
That reasoning has broad implications, because many if not most laws are generally applicable. For example, under current law, a religious believer will almost certainly lose a free exercise challenge to an antidiscrimination law that covers sexual orientation.
The public was outraged over the Court's decision in the peyote case. Congress responded with the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA). The legislation had strong support from across the political spectrum. It passed the Senate in 1993 by a vote of 97-3. Five years later, Congress tried to pass another version, but it died in committee.
The primary reason that the revised legislation failed is that between 1993 and 1998, people began to worry that strong protections for religious liberty could harm gays and lesbians. The bipartisan coalition that had supported the RFRA legislation fractured. Instead of reaffirming comprehensive protections for religious liberty, Congress enacted a more obscure law, largely confined to zoning and prisons.
This isn't the whole story. Two years ago, the Supreme Court recognized important protections for "churches" and "ministers" (though the definitions of both remain unspecified). In addition, part of the original RFRA remains intact—that's how Hobby Lobby recently prevailed in challenging contraception coverage under the Affordable Care Act. But as I noted for CT, Hobby Lobby's narrow legal victory hinged on a statute, not a constitutional principle. In the weeks after Hobby Lobby, we have already seen calls to repeal RFRA and to remove religious exemptions from proposed antidiscrimination legislation at the federal level. And while many states have constitutional and statutory protections for religious liberty, efforts to strengthen those protections at the state level have encountered growing political resistance.
What Lies Ahead
What does the current legal and cultural landscape suggest? Here are three predictions.
Prediction #1: Only religious groups (by no means all of them) will impose restrictions based on sexual conduct. That is in stark contrast to the many groups that make gender-based distinctions: fraternities and sororities, women's colleges, single-sex private high schools, sports teams, fitness clubs, and strip clubs, to name a few. It is perhaps unsurprising in light of these observations that views on gender and sexual conduct have flip-flopped. Thirty years ago, many people were concerned about gender equality, but few had LGBTQ equality on their radar. Today, if you ask your average 20-year-old whether it is worse for a fraternity to exclude women or for a Christian group to ask gay and lesbian members to refrain from sexual conduct, the responses would be overwhelmingly in one direction. That trend will likely continue.
If you ask your average 20-year-old whether it is worse for a fraternity to exclude women or for a Christian group to ask gay and lesbian members to refrain from sexual conduct, the response would be overwhelmingly in one direction.
Prediction #2: Only religious groups will accept a distinction between "sexual conduct" and "sexual orientation," and those groups will almost certainly lose the legal effort to maintain that distinction. Most Christian membership limitations today are based on conduct rather than orientation: they allow a gay or lesbian person to join a group, but prohibit that person from engaging in conduct that falls outside the church's teachings on sexuality. These policies—like the one at Gordon College currently under fire—are not limited to gays or lesbians; all unmarried men and women are to refrain from sexual conduct. The distinction between status and conduct from which they derive is rooted in Christian tradition, and it is not limited to sexuality: one can be a sinner and abstain from a particular sin.
But many people reject the distinction between status and conduct. And in a 2010 decision, Christian Legal Society v. Martinez, the Supreme Court also rejected it, viewing distinctions based on homosexual conduct as equivalent to discrimination against gays and lesbians. I have argued in a recent book (Liberty's Refuge: The Forgotten Freedom of Assembly) that the Court's reasoning is troubling in the context of a private group's membership requirements. But it is the current state of the law.
Prediction #3: Fewer and fewer people will value religious freedom. Although some Christians will respond to looming challenges with appeals to religious liberty, their appeals will likely face indifference or even hostility from those who don't value it. The growing indifference is perhaps unsurprising because many past challenges to religious liberty are no longer active threats. We don't enforce blasphemy laws. We don't force people to make compelled statements of belief. We don't impose taxes to finance training ministers. These changes mean that in practice, many Americans no longer depend upon the free exercise right for their religious liberty. They are free to practice their religion without government constraints.
Additionally, a growing number of atheists and "nonreligious" Americans have little use for free exercise protections. Even though most Americans will continue to value religious liberty in a general sense, fewer will recognize the immediate and practical need for it to be protected by law.
This final prediction is deeply unsettling, because strong protections for religious liberty are core to our country's law and history. But those protections have been vulnerable since the Court's decision in the peyote case. And they will remain vulnerable unless the Court revisits its free exercise doctrine.
After Religious Exceptionalism
If I am correct about these three predictions, then arguments rooted in religious exceptionalism will see diminishing returns. There is, however, a different argument that appeals to a different set of values. It's the argument of pluralism: the idea that, in a society that lacks a shared vision of a deeply held common good, we can and must live with deep difference among groups and their beliefs, values, and identities. The pluralist argument is not clothed in the language of religious liberty, but it extends to religious groups and institutions. And Christians who take it seriously can model it not only for their own interests but also on behalf of their friends and neighbors.
Pluralism rests on three interrelated aspirations: tolerance, humility, and patience. Tolerance means a willingness to accept genuine difference, including profound moral disagreement. In the pluralist context, tolerance does not embrace difference as good or right; its more limited aspiration is permitting differences to coexist.
The second aspiration, humility, recognizes that our own beliefs and intuitions rest upon tradition-bound values that can't be fully proven or justified by external forms of rationality. Notions of "equality" and "morality" emerge from within particular traditions whose basic premises are not endorsed by all. Humility holds open that there is right and wrong and good and evil, and that in the fullness of time the true meaning of equality and morality will emerge. But humility also opens the door to hearing others' beliefs about right and wrong, good and evil. Instead of making claims about what we can know or prove, we might point out that faith commitments underlie all beliefs (religious or otherwise) and stand ready to give the reason for the hope that we have (1 Pet. 3:15).
The third aspiration, patience, recognizes that contested moral questions are best resolved through persuasion rather than coercion, and that persuasion takes time. Most of us—whatever our beliefs—think we are right in a profound way. Most of us structure our lives around our deepest moral commitments. And we instinctively want our normative views to prevail on the rest of society. But patience reminds us that the best means to a better end is through persuasion and dialogue, not coercion and bullying.
In this age, the argument of pluralism is far likelier to resonate in the public square than arguments for religious exceptionalism.
Pluralism does not entail relativism. Living well in a pluralist world does not mean a never-ending openness to any possible claim. Every one of us holds deeply entrenched beliefs that others find unpersuasive, inconsistent, or downright loopy. More pointed, every one of us holds beliefs that others find morally reprehensible. Pluralism does not impose the fiction of assuming that all ideas are equally valid or morally benign. It does mean respecting people, aiming for fair discussion, and allowing for the right to differ about serious matters.
Pluralism and Witness
The argument for pluralism and the aspirations of tolerance, humility, and patience are fully consistent with a faithful Christian witness. And in this age, they are also far likelier to resonate than arguments for religious exceptionalism. The claim of religious exceptionalism is that only believers should benefit from special protections, and often at the cost of those who don't share their faith commitments. The claim of pluralism is that all members of society should benefit from its protections.
Christians have a long way to go in affirming the value of pluralism for all members of society. We might begin by recognizing its role for our gay and lesbian neighbors. When Uganda enacts a law that punishes homosexuality with death, U.S. Christians can speak out against such a law. Domestically, we need to think carefully about the kinds of legislation being pushed at the state level. Some proposed laws are undoubtedly important to protect religious institutions' right to live in accordance with their own beliefs and traditions; others are deeply problematic. Christians in states without any antidiscrimination protections for gays and lesbians might consider supporting those laws containing exemptions for religious groups, rather than simply advocating for religious freedom on its own.
Unkind words have emerged from almost every corner of the public discourse. Christians should not be bullied or silenced by careless language. But neither should they engage in it. Advocacy for Christian witness must itself demonstrate Christian witness. In this way, our present circumstances provide new opportunities to embody tolerance, humility, and patience. And, of course, we have at our disposal not only these aspirations but also the virtues that shape our lives: faith, hope, and love.
John Inazu is associate professor of law at Washington University School of Law, an expert on the First Amendment freedoms of speech, assembly, and religion, and the author of Liberty's Refuge: The Forgotten Freedom of Assembly (Yale University Press, 2012). He recently wrote for CT about Hobby Lobby.
Thursday, July 24, 2014
The Eponymous Flower:Vatican Removes Rainbow Flag from Its German Language Site
Whoever posted the picture below on the German language site of the Vatican website should be ferreted out(discovered) and removed from his position.
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Friday, July 18, 2014
The Eponymous Flower:
Update: Vatican Removes Rainbow Flag from Its German Language Site
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Friday, July 18, 2014
The Eponymous Flower:
Update: Vatican Removes Rainbow Flag from Its German Language Site
Edit: Yesterday, the Vatican German site posted a picture of two gomorrists holding a rainbow flag and kissing along with an article where the aberrosexual enabling bishop of Trier was lending his support to a same-sex lobbying group and their agenda. The picture has been removed. Someone at the Vatican news service must have an interest in promoting such ideas. They should remove him or her too.
We also wish they'd remove Bishop Ackerman of Trier along with most of the bishops in the German speaking areas of Europe, but that is probably a bridge too far, or a pontiff too far.
We also wish they'd remove Bishop Ackerman of Trier along with most of the bishops in the German speaking areas of Europe, but that is probably a bridge too far, or a pontiff too far.
Whoever posted the picture below on the German language site of the Vatican website should be ferreted out(discovered) and removed from his position.
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Interview with Bishop Athanasius Schneider
Interview with Bishop Athanasius Schneider
Interview with Bishop Athanasius Schneider, Auxiliary Bishop of the Archdiocese of Saint Mary in Astana, Kazakhstan for Catholic Herald
BAS: ‘To my knowledge and experience, the deepest wound in the actual crisis of the Church is the Eucharistic wound; the abuses of the Blessed Sacrament.
‘Many people are receiving Holy Communion in an objective state of mortal sin...This is spreading in the Church, especially in the western world. There people very rarely go to Holy Communion with a sufficient preparation.
‘Some people who go to Holy Communion live in irregular moral situations, which do not correspond to the Gospel. Without being married, they go to Holy Communion. They might be divorced and living in a new marriage, a civil marriage, and they go nevertheless to Holy Communion. I think this is a very, very grievous situation.
‘There is also the question of the objectively irreverent reception of Holy Communion. The so-called new, modern manner of receiving Holy Communion directly into the hand is very serious because it exposes Christ to an enormous banality.
‘There is the grievous fact of the loss of the Eucharistic fragments. No one can deny this. And the fragments of the consecrated host are crushed by feet. This is horrible! Our God, in our churches, is trampled by feet! No one can deny it.
‘And this is happening on a large scale. This has to be, for a person with faith and love for God, a very serious phenomenon.
‘We cannot continue as if Jesus as God does not exist, as though only the bread exists. This modern practice of Communion in the hand has nothing to do with the practice in the ancient Church. The modern practice of receiving Communion in hand contributes gradually to the loss of the Catholic faith in the real presence and in the transubstantiation.
‘A priest and a bishop cannot say this practice is ok. Here is at stake the most holy, the most divine and concrete on Earth.'
Q. You are standing out on your own in this?
BAS: ‘I am very sad that I am feeling myself as one who is shouting in the desert. The Eucharistic crisis due to the modern use of Communion in hand is so evident. This is not an exaggeration. It is time that the bishops raise their voices for the Eucharistic Jesus who has no voice to defend himself. Here is an attack on the most Holy, an attack on the Eucharistic faith.
‘Of course there are people who receive Holy Communion in the hand with much devotion and faith, but they are in a minority. The vast mass, though, are losing the faith through this very banal manner of taking Holy Communion like common food, like a chip or a cake. Such a manner to receive the most Holy here on earth is not sacred, and it destroys by time the deep awareness and the Catholic faith in the real presence and in the transubstantiation.’
Q. Is the Church going in the opposite direction from where you are going?
BAS: ‘It seems that the majority of the clergy and the bishops are content with this modern use of Communion in hand and don’t realize the real dangers connected with such a practice. For me this is incredible. How is this possible, when Jesus is present in the little hosts? A priest and a bishop should say: “I have to do something, at least to gradually reduce this. All that I can do, I have to do.” Unfortunately, though, there are members of the clergy who are making propaganda of the modern use of Communion in the hand and sometimes prohibiting receiving Communion on the tongue and kneeling. There are even priests who are discriminating those who kneel for Holy Communion. This is very, very sad.
‘There is also an increasing stealing of hosts, because of distributing Communion directly in the hand. There is a net, a business, of the stealing of Holy Hosts and this is much facilitated by Communion in the hand.
‘Why would I, as a priest and bishop, expose Our Lord to such a danger, to such a risk? When these bishops or priests [who approve of Communion in the hand] have some item of value, they would never expose this to great danger, to be lost or stolen. They protect their house, but they do not protect Jesus and allow him to be stolen very easily.’
Q. In respect of the questionnaire on the issue of family – people are expecting big changes.
BAS: ‘There is on this issue a deal of propaganda, put about by the Mass media. We need to be very careful. There are the official anti-Christian mass media worldwide. In almost every country it is the same content of news, with the exception perhaps of the African and Asian countries or in the East of Europe.
‘Only on the Internet can you spread your own ideas. Thanks be to God the Internet exists.
‘The idea of changes in marriage and moral laws to be done at the upcoming synod of bishops in Rome, comes from mostly the anti-Christian media. And some clergy and Catholics are collaborating with them in spreading the expectations of the anti-Christian world to change the law of God concerning marriage and sexuality.
‘It is an attack by the anti-Christian world and it is very tragic and sad that some clergy are collaborating with them. To argue for a change the law of God, they use in a kind of sophism the concept of mercy. But in reality this is not mercy, this is cruel.
‘It is not mercy, for instance, if someone has a disease to leave him in his miserable condition. This is cruel.
‘I would not give, for instance, a diabetic sugar, this would be cruel of me. I would try to take someone out of this situation and give them another meal. Perhaps they won’t like it to begin with, but it will be better for them.
‘Those of the clergy who want admit the divorced and remarried to Holy Communion operate with a false concept of mercy. It is comparable with a doctor who gives a patient sugar, although he knows it will kill him. But the soul is more important than the body.
‘If the bishops admit the divorced and remarried to Holy Communion, then they are confirming them in their errors in the sight of God. They will even close down the voice of their conscience. They will push them more into the irregular situation only for the sake of this temporal life, forgetting that after this life, though, there is the judgment of God.
‘This topic will be discussed in the synod. This is on the agenda. But I hope the majority of the bishops still have so much Catholic spirit and faith that they will reject the above mentioned proposal and not accept this.
Q. What is this crisis you mention?
BAS: ‘This is a broader crisis than the reception of the Blessed Sacrament. I think this issue of the reception of Holy Communion by the remarried will blow up and show the real crisis in the Church. The real crisis of the Church is anthropocentrism, forgetting the Christocentrism. Indeed, this is the deepest evil, when man or the clergy are putting themselves in the centre when they are celebrating liturgy and when they are changing the revealed truth of God, e.g. concerning the Sixth Commandment and human sexuality.
‘The crisis reveals itself also in the manner in which the Eucharistic Lord is treated. The Eucharist is at the heart of the Church. When the heart is weak, the whole body is weak. So when the practice around the Eucharist is weak, then the heart and the life of the Church is weak. And when people have no more supernatural vision of God in the Eucharist then they will start the worship of man, and then also doctrine will change to the desire of man.
‘This crisis is when we place ourselves, including the priests, at the centre and when God is put in the corner and this is happening also materially. The Blessed Sacrament is sometimes in a cupboard away from the centre and the chair of the priest is in the centre. We have already been in this situation for 40 or 50 years and there is the real danger that God and his Commandments and laws will be put on the side and the human natural desiring in the centre. There is causal connection between the Eucharistic and the doctrinal crisis.
‘Our first duty as human beings is to adore God, not us, but Him. Unfortunately, the liturgical practice of the last 40 years has been very anthropocentric.
'Participating in liturgy is firstly not about doing things but praying and worshipping, to love God with all your soul. This is true participation, to be united with God in your soul. Exterior participation is not essential.
‘The crisis is really this: we have not put Christ or God at the centre. And Christ is God incarnated. Our problem today is that we put away the incarnation. We have eclipsed it. If God remains in my mind only as an idea, this is Gnostic. In other religions e.g. Jews, Muslims, God is not incarnated. For them, God is in the book, but He is not concrete. Only in Christianity, and really in the Catholic Church, is the incarnation fully realised and this has to be stressed therefore also in every point of the liturgy. God is here and really present. So every detail has meaning.
‘We are living in an un-Christian society, in a new paganism. The temptation today for the clergy is to adapt to the new world to the new paganism, to be collaborationists. We are in a similar situation to the first centuries, when the majority of the society was pagan, and Christianity was discriminated against.’
Q. Do you think you can see this because of your experiences in the Soviet Union?
BAS: ‘Yes, [I know what it is] to be persecuted, to give testimony that you are Christian.
‘We are a minority. We are surrounded by a very cruel pagan world. The temptation and challenge of today can be compared with the first centuries. Christians were asked to accept the pagan world and to show this by putting one grain of incense into a fire in front of the statue of the Emperor or of a pagan idol. But this was idolatry and no good Christian put any grain of incense there. They preferred to give their lives, even children, lay people, who were persecuted, gave their lives. Unfortunately there were in the first century members of the clergy and even bishops who put grains of incense in front of the statue of the Emperor or of a pagan idol or who delivered the books of the Holy Scripture to be burned. Such collaborationist Christians and clerics were called in those times “thurificati” or “traditores”.
‘Now, in our days the persecution is more sophisticated. Catholics or clergy are not asking to put some incense in front of an idol. It would be only material. Now, they neo-pagan world wants us to take over its ideas, such as the dissolution of the Sixth Commandment of God, on the pretext of mercy. If some clergy and bishops start to collaborate with the pagan world today in this dissolution of the Sixth Commandment and in the revision of the way God created man and woman, then they are traitors of the Faith, they are participating ultimately in pagan sacrifice.’
Q. Can you see a split coming in the Church?
BAS: ‘Unfortunately, for some decades some clergy have accepted these ideas of the world. Now however they are following them publicly. When these things continue, I think, there will be an interior split in the Church of those who are faithful to the faith of their baptism and of the integrity of the Catholic faith. There will be a split with those who are assuming the spirit of this world and there will be a clear split, I think. One can imagine that Catholics, who remain faithful to the unchangeable Catholic truth may, for a time, be persecuted or discriminated even on behalf of those who has power in the exterior structures of the Church? But the gates of the hell, i.e. of the heresy, will not prevail against the Church and the Supreme Magisterium will surely issue an unequivocal doctrinal statement, rejecting any collaboration with the neo-pagan ideas of changing e.g. the Sixth Commandment of God, the meaning of sexuality and of family. Then some 'liberals', and many collaborators with the spirit of this world, many modern “thurificati et traditores” will leave the Church. Because the Divine truth will unresistingly bring the clarification, will set us free, and will separate in the midst of the Church the sons of the Divine light and the sons of the of the pseudo-light of this pagan and anti-Christian world. I can presume that such a separation will affect each level of the Catholics: lay people and even not excluding the high clergy. Those clergy who accept today the spirit of the pagan world on morality and family declare themselves Catholics and even faithful to the Pope. They even declare extremists those who are faithful to the Catholic faith or those who are promoting the glory of Christ in the liturgy.’
Q. Do you feel you have been declared an extremist?
BAS: ‘I have not been declared as such formally. I would say such clergy are not in the majority but they have acquired a lot of influence in the Church. They managed to occupy some key positions in some Church offices. Yet this is not power in the eyes of God. Truly powerful are the little ones in the Church, who conserve the faith.
‘These little ones in the Church have been let down and neglected. They have kept the purity of their faith and they represent the true power of the church in the eyes of God and not those who are in administration. Thanks be to God, the numbers of these little ones are growing.
‘I spoke for instance with young students in Oxford [picture left] and I was so much impressed by these students, I was so glad to see their purity of faith and their convictions, and the clear Catholic mind. Such examples and groups are growing in the Church and this is the work of the Holy Spirit. This will renew the Church. So I am confident and hopeful also in respect of this crisis in the Church. The Holy Ghost will win this crisis with this little army.
‘I am not worried about the future. The Church is Christ’s Church and He is the real Head of the Church, the Pope is only the Vicar of Christ. The soul of the Church is the Holy Spirit and He is powerful. However we are now experiencing a deep crisis in the Church as it happened several times in two thousand years.
Q. Will it get worse before it gets better?
BAS: ‘I have the impression that it will be worse. Sometime the things have to go to the depths and then you will see the collapse of this anthropocentric, clerical system, which is abusing Church administration power, abusing the liturgy, abusing the concepts of God, abusing the faith and the piety of the little ones in the Church.
‘Then we will see the rising of a renewed Church. This is already preparing. Then this liberal clerical edifice will crash down because they have roots and no fruits.’
Q. Some people would say you are worrying about unimportant things, what about the poor?
BAS: ‘This is erroneous. The first commandment which Christ gave us was to adore God alone. Liturgy is not a meeting of friends. It is our first task to adore and glorify God in the liturgy and also in our manner of life. From a true adoration and love of God grows love for the poor and our neighbour. It is a consequence. The saints in two thousand years of the Church, all those saints who were so prayerful and pious, they were all extremely merciful for the poor and to care for the poor.
‘In these two commandments are all the others. But the first commandment is to love and adore God and that is realised in a supreme manner in the sacred liturgy. When you are neglecting the first commandment, then you are not doing the will of God, you are pleasing yourself. Happiness is to fulfil the will of God, not to fulfil our will.’
Q. How long will it be before the Church is renewed?
BAS: ‘I am not a prophet. We can only presume. But, if you look at the history of the Church, the deepest crisis was in the fourth century, that was Arianism. This was a tremendous crisis, all the episcopacy, almost all, collaborated with the heresy. Only some bishops remained faithful, you could count them on the fingers of one hand. This crisis lasted more or less 60 years.
‘Then the terrible crisis of the so-called Obscure century, the 10th century, when the papacy was occupied by some very wicked and immoral Roman families. They occupied the papal chair with their corrupt sons, and it was a terrible crisis.
‘The next period of harm was the so-called exile of Avignon and was very damaging to the Church, causing the great occidental schism. All these crisis lasted some 70-80 years and were very bad for the Church.
‘Now we are, I would say, in the fourth great crisis, in a tremendous confusion over doctrine and liturgy. We have already been in this for 50 years. Perhaps God will be merciful to us in 20 or 30 years? ‘Nevertheless we have all the beauty of the divine truths, of divine love and grace in the Church. No one can take this away, no synod, no bishop, not even a Pope can take away the treasure and beauty of the Catholic faith, of the Eucharistic Jesus, of the sacraments. The unchangeable doctrine, the unchangeable liturgical principles, the holiness of the life constitute the true power of the Church.’
Q. Our time is seen as a much more liberal era in the Church.
BAS: ‘We have to pray that God will guide his Church from this crisis and give to his Church apostles who are courageous and holy. We need defenders of the truth and defenders of the Eucharistic Jesus. When a bishop is defending the flock and defending Jesus in the Eucharist, then this bishop is defending the little ones in the Church, not the powerful ones.’
Q. So you don’t mind being unpopular?
BAS: ‘It is quite insignificant to be popular or unpopular. For every clergy the first interest is to be popular in the eyes of God and not in the eyes of today or of the powerful. Jesus said a warning: Woe of you when people speak good of you.
‘Popularity is false. Jesus and the apostles rejected popularity. Great saints of the Church, e.g. SS Thomas More and John Fisher, rejected popularity and they are the great heroes. And those who today are worried with the popularity of the mass media and public opinion, they will not be remembered in the history. They will be remembered as cowards and not as heroes of the Faith.’
Q. The media has great expectations of Pope Francis.
BAS: ‘Thanks be to God, Pope Francis has not expressed himself in these ways that the mass media expect from him. He has spoken until now, in his official homilies, very beautiful Catholic doctrine. I hope he will continue to teach in very clear manner the Catholic doctrine.’
Q. On sharing Holy Communion with Anglicans and others?
BAS: ‘This is not possible. There are different faiths. Holy Communion is not a means to achieve unity. It is the last step, not the first step. It would be a desecration of the Holy. Of course, we have to be one. Yet we have differences in belief, some substantial differences. The Eucharist is a sign of the deepest unity. It would be a lie, it would be contradictory to logic sharing Holy Communion with non-Catholics.
‘Ecumenism is necessary in order to be in contact with our separated brethren, to love them. In the midst of the challenge of the new paganism, we can and have to collaborate with serious non-Catholics to defend the revealed Divine truth and the natural law, created by God.’
‘It will be better not to have such a structure when the State is governing the life of the Church, such as for instance the appointments of the clergy or the bishops. Such a practice of a state church would damage the Church itself. In England e.g. the State is governing the Church of England. Such an influence of the State can corrupt spiritually and theologically the church, so it is better to be free from such an established state church.’
Q. On women in the Church.
BAS: ‘Women are called the weaker sex, given they are physically weaker, however they are spiritually stronger and more courageous than men. It is courageous to give birth. Therefore God gave the woman a courage that a man doesn’t have.
‘Of course, there were many courageous men in the persecutions. Yet God loves to choose the weak ones to confuse the powerful. For instance the Eucharistic women, about which I spoke in my book Dominus Est worked in their families and desired to help the persecuted priests in a very exceptional way. They would never have dared to touch the holy hosts with their fingers. They would refuse to even read a reading during Mass. My mother, for example who is still living in Germany, aged 82, when she first went to the West, she was shocked, scandalised, to see women in the sanctuary during Holy Mass. The true power of the Christian and Catholic woman is the power to be the heart of the family, the domestic church, to have the privilege to be the first who gives nourishment to the body of his child and also to be the first who gives nourishment to the souls of the child, teaching it the first prayer and the first truths of the Catholic faith. The most prestigious and beautiful profession of a woman is to be mother, and especially to be a Catholic mother.’
Photos: Joseph Shaw
Interview with Bishop Athanasius Schneider - May 2014 - full text
The Catholic Herald published an interview with Bishop Athanasius Schneider in its edition of 30 May 2014. The interview was conducted by freelance journalist Sarah Atkinson, who, coincidently, is also the editor of Mass of Ages. The interview published in the Catholic Herald was limited by space, but here we reproduce the full text of the interview, which has been approved by the bishop.Interview with Bishop Athanasius Schneider, Auxiliary Bishop of the Archdiocese of Saint Mary in Astana, Kazakhstan for Catholic HeraldBAS: ‘To my knowledge and experience, the deepest wound in the actual crisis of the Church is the Eucharistic wound; the abuses of the Blessed Sacrament.
‘Many people are receiving Holy Communion in an objective state of mortal sin...This is spreading in the Church, especially in the western world. There people very rarely go to Holy Communion with a sufficient preparation.
‘Some people who go to Holy Communion live in irregular moral situations, which do not correspond to the Gospel. Without being married, they go to Holy Communion. They might be divorced and living in a new marriage, a civil marriage, and they go nevertheless to Holy Communion. I think this is a very, very grievous situation.
‘There is also the question of the objectively irreverent reception of Holy Communion. The so-called new, modern manner of receiving Holy Communion directly into the hand is very serious because it exposes Christ to an enormous banality.
‘There is the grievous fact of the loss of the Eucharistic fragments. No one can deny this. And the fragments of the consecrated host are crushed by feet. This is horrible! Our God, in our churches, is trampled by feet! No one can deny it.
‘And this is happening on a large scale. This has to be, for a person with faith and love for God, a very serious phenomenon.
‘We cannot continue as if Jesus as God does not exist, as though only the bread exists. This modern practice of Communion in the hand has nothing to do with the practice in the ancient Church. The modern practice of receiving Communion in hand contributes gradually to the loss of the Catholic faith in the real presence and in the transubstantiation.
‘A priest and a bishop cannot say this practice is ok. Here is at stake the most holy, the most divine and concrete on Earth.'
Q. You are standing out on your own in this?
BAS: ‘I am very sad that I am feeling myself as one who is shouting in the desert. The Eucharistic crisis due to the modern use of Communion in hand is so evident. This is not an exaggeration. It is time that the bishops raise their voices for the Eucharistic Jesus who has no voice to defend himself. Here is an attack on the most Holy, an attack on the Eucharistic faith.
‘Of course there are people who receive Holy Communion in the hand with much devotion and faith, but they are in a minority. The vast mass, though, are losing the faith through this very banal manner of taking Holy Communion like common food, like a chip or a cake. Such a manner to receive the most Holy here on earth is not sacred, and it destroys by time the deep awareness and the Catholic faith in the real presence and in the transubstantiation.’
Q. Is the Church going in the opposite direction from where you are going?BAS: ‘It seems that the majority of the clergy and the bishops are content with this modern use of Communion in hand and don’t realize the real dangers connected with such a practice. For me this is incredible. How is this possible, when Jesus is present in the little hosts? A priest and a bishop should say: “I have to do something, at least to gradually reduce this. All that I can do, I have to do.” Unfortunately, though, there are members of the clergy who are making propaganda of the modern use of Communion in the hand and sometimes prohibiting receiving Communion on the tongue and kneeling. There are even priests who are discriminating those who kneel for Holy Communion. This is very, very sad.
‘There is also an increasing stealing of hosts, because of distributing Communion directly in the hand. There is a net, a business, of the stealing of Holy Hosts and this is much facilitated by Communion in the hand.
‘Why would I, as a priest and bishop, expose Our Lord to such a danger, to such a risk? When these bishops or priests [who approve of Communion in the hand] have some item of value, they would never expose this to great danger, to be lost or stolen. They protect their house, but they do not protect Jesus and allow him to be stolen very easily.’
Q. In respect of the questionnaire on the issue of family – people are expecting big changes.
BAS: ‘There is on this issue a deal of propaganda, put about by the Mass media. We need to be very careful. There are the official anti-Christian mass media worldwide. In almost every country it is the same content of news, with the exception perhaps of the African and Asian countries or in the East of Europe.
‘Only on the Internet can you spread your own ideas. Thanks be to God the Internet exists.
‘The idea of changes in marriage and moral laws to be done at the upcoming synod of bishops in Rome, comes from mostly the anti-Christian media. And some clergy and Catholics are collaborating with them in spreading the expectations of the anti-Christian world to change the law of God concerning marriage and sexuality.
‘It is an attack by the anti-Christian world and it is very tragic and sad that some clergy are collaborating with them. To argue for a change the law of God, they use in a kind of sophism the concept of mercy. But in reality this is not mercy, this is cruel.
‘It is not mercy, for instance, if someone has a disease to leave him in his miserable condition. This is cruel.
‘I would not give, for instance, a diabetic sugar, this would be cruel of me. I would try to take someone out of this situation and give them another meal. Perhaps they won’t like it to begin with, but it will be better for them.
‘Those of the clergy who want admit the divorced and remarried to Holy Communion operate with a false concept of mercy. It is comparable with a doctor who gives a patient sugar, although he knows it will kill him. But the soul is more important than the body.
‘If the bishops admit the divorced and remarried to Holy Communion, then they are confirming them in their errors in the sight of God. They will even close down the voice of their conscience. They will push them more into the irregular situation only for the sake of this temporal life, forgetting that after this life, though, there is the judgment of God.
‘This topic will be discussed in the synod. This is on the agenda. But I hope the majority of the bishops still have so much Catholic spirit and faith that they will reject the above mentioned proposal and not accept this.
Q. What is this crisis you mention?BAS: ‘This is a broader crisis than the reception of the Blessed Sacrament. I think this issue of the reception of Holy Communion by the remarried will blow up and show the real crisis in the Church. The real crisis of the Church is anthropocentrism, forgetting the Christocentrism. Indeed, this is the deepest evil, when man or the clergy are putting themselves in the centre when they are celebrating liturgy and when they are changing the revealed truth of God, e.g. concerning the Sixth Commandment and human sexuality.
‘The crisis reveals itself also in the manner in which the Eucharistic Lord is treated. The Eucharist is at the heart of the Church. When the heart is weak, the whole body is weak. So when the practice around the Eucharist is weak, then the heart and the life of the Church is weak. And when people have no more supernatural vision of God in the Eucharist then they will start the worship of man, and then also doctrine will change to the desire of man.
‘This crisis is when we place ourselves, including the priests, at the centre and when God is put in the corner and this is happening also materially. The Blessed Sacrament is sometimes in a cupboard away from the centre and the chair of the priest is in the centre. We have already been in this situation for 40 or 50 years and there is the real danger that God and his Commandments and laws will be put on the side and the human natural desiring in the centre. There is causal connection between the Eucharistic and the doctrinal crisis.
‘Our first duty as human beings is to adore God, not us, but Him. Unfortunately, the liturgical practice of the last 40 years has been very anthropocentric.
'Participating in liturgy is firstly not about doing things but praying and worshipping, to love God with all your soul. This is true participation, to be united with God in your soul. Exterior participation is not essential.
‘The crisis is really this: we have not put Christ or God at the centre. And Christ is God incarnated. Our problem today is that we put away the incarnation. We have eclipsed it. If God remains in my mind only as an idea, this is Gnostic. In other religions e.g. Jews, Muslims, God is not incarnated. For them, God is in the book, but He is not concrete. Only in Christianity, and really in the Catholic Church, is the incarnation fully realised and this has to be stressed therefore also in every point of the liturgy. God is here and really present. So every detail has meaning.
‘We are living in an un-Christian society, in a new paganism. The temptation today for the clergy is to adapt to the new world to the new paganism, to be collaborationists. We are in a similar situation to the first centuries, when the majority of the society was pagan, and Christianity was discriminated against.’
Q. Do you think you can see this because of your experiences in the Soviet Union?
BAS: ‘Yes, [I know what it is] to be persecuted, to give testimony that you are Christian.
‘We are a minority. We are surrounded by a very cruel pagan world. The temptation and challenge of today can be compared with the first centuries. Christians were asked to accept the pagan world and to show this by putting one grain of incense into a fire in front of the statue of the Emperor or of a pagan idol. But this was idolatry and no good Christian put any grain of incense there. They preferred to give their lives, even children, lay people, who were persecuted, gave their lives. Unfortunately there were in the first century members of the clergy and even bishops who put grains of incense in front of the statue of the Emperor or of a pagan idol or who delivered the books of the Holy Scripture to be burned. Such collaborationist Christians and clerics were called in those times “thurificati” or “traditores”.
‘Now, in our days the persecution is more sophisticated. Catholics or clergy are not asking to put some incense in front of an idol. It would be only material. Now, they neo-pagan world wants us to take over its ideas, such as the dissolution of the Sixth Commandment of God, on the pretext of mercy. If some clergy and bishops start to collaborate with the pagan world today in this dissolution of the Sixth Commandment and in the revision of the way God created man and woman, then they are traitors of the Faith, they are participating ultimately in pagan sacrifice.’
Q. Can you see a split coming in the Church?
BAS: ‘Unfortunately, for some decades some clergy have accepted these ideas of the world. Now however they are following them publicly. When these things continue, I think, there will be an interior split in the Church of those who are faithful to the faith of their baptism and of the integrity of the Catholic faith. There will be a split with those who are assuming the spirit of this world and there will be a clear split, I think. One can imagine that Catholics, who remain faithful to the unchangeable Catholic truth may, for a time, be persecuted or discriminated even on behalf of those who has power in the exterior structures of the Church? But the gates of the hell, i.e. of the heresy, will not prevail against the Church and the Supreme Magisterium will surely issue an unequivocal doctrinal statement, rejecting any collaboration with the neo-pagan ideas of changing e.g. the Sixth Commandment of God, the meaning of sexuality and of family. Then some 'liberals', and many collaborators with the spirit of this world, many modern “thurificati et traditores” will leave the Church. Because the Divine truth will unresistingly bring the clarification, will set us free, and will separate in the midst of the Church the sons of the Divine light and the sons of the of the pseudo-light of this pagan and anti-Christian world. I can presume that such a separation will affect each level of the Catholics: lay people and even not excluding the high clergy. Those clergy who accept today the spirit of the pagan world on morality and family declare themselves Catholics and even faithful to the Pope. They even declare extremists those who are faithful to the Catholic faith or those who are promoting the glory of Christ in the liturgy.’
Q. Do you feel you have been declared an extremist?
BAS: ‘I have not been declared as such formally. I would say such clergy are not in the majority but they have acquired a lot of influence in the Church. They managed to occupy some key positions in some Church offices. Yet this is not power in the eyes of God. Truly powerful are the little ones in the Church, who conserve the faith.
‘These little ones in the Church have been let down and neglected. They have kept the purity of their faith and they represent the true power of the church in the eyes of God and not those who are in administration. Thanks be to God, the numbers of these little ones are growing.
‘I spoke for instance with young students in Oxford [picture left] and I was so much impressed by these students, I was so glad to see their purity of faith and their convictions, and the clear Catholic mind. Such examples and groups are growing in the Church and this is the work of the Holy Spirit. This will renew the Church. So I am confident and hopeful also in respect of this crisis in the Church. The Holy Ghost will win this crisis with this little army.‘I am not worried about the future. The Church is Christ’s Church and He is the real Head of the Church, the Pope is only the Vicar of Christ. The soul of the Church is the Holy Spirit and He is powerful. However we are now experiencing a deep crisis in the Church as it happened several times in two thousand years.
Q. Will it get worse before it gets better?
BAS: ‘I have the impression that it will be worse. Sometime the things have to go to the depths and then you will see the collapse of this anthropocentric, clerical system, which is abusing Church administration power, abusing the liturgy, abusing the concepts of God, abusing the faith and the piety of the little ones in the Church.
‘Then we will see the rising of a renewed Church. This is already preparing. Then this liberal clerical edifice will crash down because they have roots and no fruits.’
Q. Some people would say you are worrying about unimportant things, what about the poor?
BAS: ‘This is erroneous. The first commandment which Christ gave us was to adore God alone. Liturgy is not a meeting of friends. It is our first task to adore and glorify God in the liturgy and also in our manner of life. From a true adoration and love of God grows love for the poor and our neighbour. It is a consequence. The saints in two thousand years of the Church, all those saints who were so prayerful and pious, they were all extremely merciful for the poor and to care for the poor.
‘In these two commandments are all the others. But the first commandment is to love and adore God and that is realised in a supreme manner in the sacred liturgy. When you are neglecting the first commandment, then you are not doing the will of God, you are pleasing yourself. Happiness is to fulfil the will of God, not to fulfil our will.’
Q. How long will it be before the Church is renewed?
BAS: ‘I am not a prophet. We can only presume. But, if you look at the history of the Church, the deepest crisis was in the fourth century, that was Arianism. This was a tremendous crisis, all the episcopacy, almost all, collaborated with the heresy. Only some bishops remained faithful, you could count them on the fingers of one hand. This crisis lasted more or less 60 years.
‘Then the terrible crisis of the so-called Obscure century, the 10th century, when the papacy was occupied by some very wicked and immoral Roman families. They occupied the papal chair with their corrupt sons, and it was a terrible crisis.
‘The next period of harm was the so-called exile of Avignon and was very damaging to the Church, causing the great occidental schism. All these crisis lasted some 70-80 years and were very bad for the Church.
‘Now we are, I would say, in the fourth great crisis, in a tremendous confusion over doctrine and liturgy. We have already been in this for 50 years. Perhaps God will be merciful to us in 20 or 30 years? ‘Nevertheless we have all the beauty of the divine truths, of divine love and grace in the Church. No one can take this away, no synod, no bishop, not even a Pope can take away the treasure and beauty of the Catholic faith, of the Eucharistic Jesus, of the sacraments. The unchangeable doctrine, the unchangeable liturgical principles, the holiness of the life constitute the true power of the Church.’
Q. Our time is seen as a much more liberal era in the Church.
BAS: ‘We have to pray that God will guide his Church from this crisis and give to his Church apostles who are courageous and holy. We need defenders of the truth and defenders of the Eucharistic Jesus. When a bishop is defending the flock and defending Jesus in the Eucharist, then this bishop is defending the little ones in the Church, not the powerful ones.’
Q. So you don’t mind being unpopular?
BAS: ‘It is quite insignificant to be popular or unpopular. For every clergy the first interest is to be popular in the eyes of God and not in the eyes of today or of the powerful. Jesus said a warning: Woe of you when people speak good of you.
‘Popularity is false. Jesus and the apostles rejected popularity. Great saints of the Church, e.g. SS Thomas More and John Fisher, rejected popularity and they are the great heroes. And those who today are worried with the popularity of the mass media and public opinion, they will not be remembered in the history. They will be remembered as cowards and not as heroes of the Faith.’
Q. The media has great expectations of Pope Francis.BAS: ‘Thanks be to God, Pope Francis has not expressed himself in these ways that the mass media expect from him. He has spoken until now, in his official homilies, very beautiful Catholic doctrine. I hope he will continue to teach in very clear manner the Catholic doctrine.’
Q. On sharing Holy Communion with Anglicans and others?
BAS: ‘This is not possible. There are different faiths. Holy Communion is not a means to achieve unity. It is the last step, not the first step. It would be a desecration of the Holy. Of course, we have to be one. Yet we have differences in belief, some substantial differences. The Eucharist is a sign of the deepest unity. It would be a lie, it would be contradictory to logic sharing Holy Communion with non-Catholics.
‘Ecumenism is necessary in order to be in contact with our separated brethren, to love them. In the midst of the challenge of the new paganism, we can and have to collaborate with serious non-Catholics to defend the revealed Divine truth and the natural law, created by God.’
‘It will be better not to have such a structure when the State is governing the life of the Church, such as for instance the appointments of the clergy or the bishops. Such a practice of a state church would damage the Church itself. In England e.g. the State is governing the Church of England. Such an influence of the State can corrupt spiritually and theologically the church, so it is better to be free from such an established state church.’
Q. On women in the Church.
BAS: ‘Women are called the weaker sex, given they are physically weaker, however they are spiritually stronger and more courageous than men. It is courageous to give birth. Therefore God gave the woman a courage that a man doesn’t have.
‘Of course, there were many courageous men in the persecutions. Yet God loves to choose the weak ones to confuse the powerful. For instance the Eucharistic women, about which I spoke in my book Dominus Est worked in their families and desired to help the persecuted priests in a very exceptional way. They would never have dared to touch the holy hosts with their fingers. They would refuse to even read a reading during Mass. My mother, for example who is still living in Germany, aged 82, when she first went to the West, she was shocked, scandalised, to see women in the sanctuary during Holy Mass. The true power of the Christian and Catholic woman is the power to be the heart of the family, the domestic church, to have the privilege to be the first who gives nourishment to the body of his child and also to be the first who gives nourishment to the souls of the child, teaching it the first prayer and the first truths of the Catholic faith. The most prestigious and beautiful profession of a woman is to be mother, and especially to be a Catholic mother.’
Photos: Joseph Shaw
Wednesday, July 23, 2014
Wednesday, July 16, 2014
Pope John Paul II and Cuba, his 1998 visit, and his 2005 death.
Pope John Paul II and Cuba, his 1998 visit, and his 2005 death.
Fidel Castro mourns pope at Havana cathedral
Cuban President Fidel Castro signs the book of
condolences for the demise of Pope John Paul II 04
April, 2005 at the nunciature in Havana. Communist
Cuba has taken the death John Paul II to heart with its
revolutionary leader Castro, a former altar boy,
praising the late pontiff's 'tireless' work for peace and
justice. AFP PHOTO STR
THE POPE WAS VERY CRITICAL OF CAPITALISM
RESPECT FOR ALL BELIEFS
AN EAGERLY AWAITED AND FRUITFUL VISIT
BUSH’S VISIT TO ROME IS AN
OUTRAGE TO THE POPE’S MEMORY
STATEMENT TO THE NATIONAL AND FOREIGN MEDIA
BY THE MINISTER OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS
MR. FELIPE PÉREZ ROQUE
HAVANA, 2 APRIL 2005. 16:00 HRS.
Foto: Roberto Morejón
Cuban President Sends Condolences to the Vatican
Havana, April 4 (AIN) President Fidel Castro's message of condolences to the Vatican upon the death of Pope John Paul II was highlighted in the local media across Cuba.
A Cuban priestess of the Afro-Cuban Santeria religion attends mass at the Cathedral of
Havana April 3, 2005. Cubans filled churches for services for Pope John Paul II, the only
pontiff to set foot on the island. It was a 1998 visit that brought greater religious freedom,
though not the opening up of the West's last Marxist state that many had expected. Cuban
President Fidel Castro decreed three days of official mourning and suspended planned
Communist Youth festivities and the finals of the official baseball league.
03 Apr 2005 REUTERS/Claudia Daut
The Pope's 1998 Visit to CubaPapal visit coverage, Granma International January 1998 http://granmai.cubaweb.com/juanpablo/ingles/index-i.html
Pacifica radio Democracy NOW! on the Pope's 1998 visit http://www.democracynow.org/search.pl?query=Cuba+Pope
Anti-Communist Pope failed
to open up Castro's Cuba
HAVANA - Pope John Paul II helped bring down the Berlin Wall, but hardly dented Cuban Communism despite a landmark visit that many thought would open up the Western Hemisphere's last Marxist state.
MSNBC.com
Pope John Paul II's Biography
Fidel Castro mourns pope at Havana cathedral
Cuban President Fidel Castro signs the book of
condolences for the demise of Pope John Paul II 04
April, 2005 at the nunciature in Havana. Communist
Cuba has taken the death John Paul II to heart with its
revolutionary leader Castro, a former altar boy,
praising the late pontiff's 'tireless' work for peace and
justice. AFP PHOTO STR
by Carlos Batista
Tuesday, April 5, 2005
HAVANA, Cuba (AFP): Cuban leader Fidel Castro on Monday mourned Pope John Paul II at a mass in Havana's cathedral, as the once officially atheist communist regime fondly remembered the late pontiff.
Cardinal Jaime Ortega, who led the mass, welcomed Castro, who was dressed in a dark tailored suit, and expressed his "gratitude for the heartfelt way the death of our Holy Father John Paul II was received (in Cuba)."
Earlier, Castro and his brother Raul Castro, the armed forces minister, signed a book of condolences at the office of the papal nuncio.
"Rest in peace, tireless fighter for friendship between peoples, enemy of war and friend of the poor ... We suffer from your departure and desire with all fervor that your example endures," Castro wrote in the condolence book.
It was Castro's second appearance at the cathedral in 46 years -- the last time was for one of his sisters' wedding, in 1959.
Cuba, which restricted religious freedoms after the 1959 revolution, called for a three-day period of mourning after the pope died on Saturday at age 84.
Reports on the pope's death dominated the front pages of the communist daily Granma and weekly Trabajadores on Monday. The Cuban flag flew at half mast across the island in the pope's honor -- an unusual move for this communist country.
In a letter to the Vatican on Sunday, Castro expressed "the deepest condolences of the Cuban people and government. Humanity will keep a touching memory of the tireless work of his Holiness Pope John Paul II in favor of peace, justice and solidarity between all peoples."
The 78-year-old Cuban leader performed a spectacular U-turn on religion in 1992 when he turned the officially atheist state into a secular one.
During his papacy John Paul II, a critic of communism, bluntly condemned the economic embargo the United States has maintained against Cuba since 1962, denouncing it as "unjust and ethically unacceptable."
And while the pope staunchly opposed communism, as well as abortion, which is legal and common in Cuba, he also condemned the excesses of capitalism and urged young people to resist crass materialism.
This all helped a rapprochement between the Vatican and communist Cuba that led to John Paul II's landmark visit to Cuba in 1998.
Castro and the pope appeared side by side in public on several occasions during the visit. Afterwards, Cubans were allowed to mark Christmas as a holiday again and to hold religious processions.
The bells of the Havana cathedral, a mid-18th century building located in the city's historic downtown area, rang hourly in the late pope's honor by order of the Cuban Conference of Bishops on Sunday.
Cuban government controlled news media gave broad coverage the Pope's funeral arrangements and events in his honor on the island.
Granma and Trabajadores both carried a front page reproduction of Castro's letter of condolence to the Vatican as well as photographs and stories of the pope's 1998 visit to Cuba.
Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque announced that a Cuban delegation would travel to the Vatican for the funeral.
Cardinal Ortega was to travel to the Vatican to join other cardinals from around the world at the pope's funeral and choose a successor.
Media coverage on Pope John Paul II, Cuba, and Cuban reactions to his death in 2005.
Message Written by Cuban President
Fidel Castro Ruz in the Condolence Book
Fidel Castro Ruz in the Condolence Book
To Pope John Paul II
Rest in peace, indefatigable battler for friendship among the peoples, enemy of war and friend of the poor.
The efforts of those who wanted to utilize your prestige and great spiritual authority against the just cause of our people in their fight against the giant empire were in vain.
You visited us in difficult times and could perceive the nobility, solidarity of spirit and moral valor of the people, who welcomed you with special respect and affection because you knew how to appreciate the goodness and love of human beings that prompted your long pilgrimage over the Earth.
Before returning to Rome you said that the restrictive economic measures imposed from outside the country were unjust and ethically unacceptable. That earned you forever the gratitude and affection of all Cubans, who today pay you a merited tribute.
Your leaving pains us, unforgettable friend, and we fervently desire that your example will endure.
Fidel Castro Ruz
April 4, 2005
Havana. April 5, 2005
Havana. April 5, 2005
Message written by First Vice president
Raúl Castro Ruz in the condolence book
Raúl Castro Ruz in the condolence book
His Holiness John Paul II protested on behalf of the poor.
He fought for peace. We shall always remember him
with respect and profound friendship.
He fought for peace. We shall always remember him
with respect and profound friendship.
Raúl Castro Ruz
April 4, 2005
===========================================================
===========================================================
GRANMA INTERNATIONAL Havana. April 7, 2005
To make the Pope responsible
for the fall of socialism is to make
too simple an analysis of history
Fidel reiterates similarities between the humanist ideas
of the Pope and those defended by the Cuban Revolution
To make the Pope responsible
for the fall of socialism is to make
too simple an analysis of history
Fidel reiterates similarities between the humanist ideas
of the Pope and those defended by the Cuban Revolution
WE fervently want the Pope’s example to endure, confirmed President Fidel Castro during his special address in the International Conference Center to leaders of the Party, state, government and the UJC, representatives of the grassroots organizations and officers and combatants of the Revolutionary Armed Forces and the Ministry of the Interior.
"It honors us," he stated, "that he visited us; I was right," he added, "when I said then that the Pope did not entertain any notion of damaging our people. His sentiments towards the Cuban people were noble, and were clearly and paradigmatically summarized by him on leaving Cuba when he spoke out against the blockade, which he described as unjust and ethically unacceptable. This opinion of the Holy Father, "commented Fidel, "should not be forgotten by the president of the United States when he takes part in the funeral ceremony in Rome.
In the president’s view the death of the religious leader constitutes a tremendously significant event that has touched international public opinion and given rise to a week of mourning throughout the planet.
John Paul II lived during one of the most complex and crucial moments for humanity, in which the world has reached a veritable crossroads, unlike any other point in history. For the first time, the disappearance of our species is a real danger and not just because of war and the proliferation of nuclear weapons; humans are also running unprecedented risks because they are destroying nature, and polluting everything around them, remarked Fidel.
The leader of the Revolution characterized the fundamental features of conflicts of the contemporary era as a basis for understanding the importance of the pontificate of John Paul II, whom he described as an exceptional man, a determined fighter, untiring, whose virtues should not be ignored. "These are our opinions from a human and social focus, in the light of fundamental questions for humanity, although we respect different opinions," he commented.
THE POPE WAS VERY CRITICAL OF CAPITALISM
"It is true," he stated, "that the Supreme Pontiff had a critical attitude to issues which, from his religious standpoint, he believed were poorly accomplished in socialist countries. We should not forget that in Poland, his native country, the nation and the Catholic religion were born at the same time, indissolubly united, a fact that was underestimated by that socialist state, where many errors were committed including those related to respect for different beliefs.
Fidel examined the historical ambit into which the man who became the leader of the Catholic Church for 26 years was born and raised. He also analyzed the political evolution of Europe prior to the World War II, and warned that communism has always frightened the world, including the Cuban people at that time. It was the level of culture achieved by the Revolution that allowed our people to overcome those prejudices.
The Pope was not born or educated to destroy socialism. "Making him responsible for the fall of this system in Europe is to make a simplistic analysis of history," he confirmed.
"Political culture in our country was born with the Revolution," Fidel continued, "because the empire, the oligarchy, the exploiters have made it their task to repeat throughout the world that communism is the most horrible thing to have existed. In the early years after the revolutionary triumph of 1959," he indicated, "they began making outrageous claims, such as that we were going to Cuban families of their of custody rights and send their children to Russia to be processed and turned into canned food. "
He declared that if Cuban socialism were to collapse one day, the blame would lie with no else but ourselves. He also emphasized that once the Cold War was over, the Pope was very critical of the capitalist system.
RESPECT FOR ALL BELIEFS
Fidel narrated his personal experience of religion, dating back to his childhood, and expressed his conviction that the religious sentiments and beliefs of each individual are strictly personal and deserve the utmost respect. "This attitude is the one that should accompany a revolutionary, a politician," he said, and affirmed that we have always fought for dignity, freedom and the rights of all human beings.
He also expressed his gratitude for having had the opportunity in life to study and the usefulness of acquiring the teachings of Marx, Engels, and Lenin in order to undertake the revolutionary leadership and understand the complex events of the world in which we live.
He assured that the Cuban Revolution will never be sectarian; it offers equality of rights, opportunities and support to all religions, with the maximum respect, but should always be on guard against expressions of extremism. As an example of the former, he highlighted the Cuban government’s gesture at the time of the Pope’s visit of declaring that December 25 – Christmas Day for Christians – would become a public holiday from that date.
AN EAGERLY AWAITED AND FRUITFUL VISIT
The Pope was received in Cuba in 1998, said Fidel, and in his sermon that was transmitted across the world, our people recognized the battle that the Supreme Pontiff was waging against underdevelopment, poverty, the external debt and the pillaging of countries, and for the globalization of solidarity, ideas with which the Revolution fully agrees.
He recalled that he had publicly stated those views of the Pope in December 1997 during the session of the National Assembly of People’s Power and later, during a television interview broadcast on January 16, 1998, shortly before the Pope’s visit; thus demonstrating that the Revolution has not changed its opinions. Thus these are points of view that have been sustained for many years and not opportunistic modifications of opinions following the recent death of John Paul II.
In the aforementioned conversation with Cuban television journalists in January 1998, referring to the impression the pope left on him during their meeting in Rome, Fidel stated that it was very good; John Paul II was very amiable and respectful and once could almost say affectionate. "He was a man with a noble face, who genuinely inspired respect, and that impression was shared by all the comrades present at that dialogue.
He reaffirmed that the Pope’s visit to our country took place at a difficult juncture for the Revolution due to the economic situation created by the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Eastern European socialist bloc. The empire was maintaining intense pressure that consisted on the one hand of blockading the nation in an attempt to bring it to its knees by hunger and, on the other, of opening its doors to any Cuban – including those committing crimes – by any means. "And we have had to endure those conditions up until now, when things have begun to radically change," he stressed.
He recounted that after the collapse of the socialist camp and above all the Soviet Union, the empire intensified its policy of aggression against the Cuban Revolution. All the calculations indicated that the country could not survive, he noted. "But our people resisted, in spite of suddenly losing all their supplies of fuel, fertilizer and foodstuffs... Our oil production barely reached 700,000 tons per year. We had lost the 14 million tons of crude from the Soviet Union.
"In that context, within the empire and in other places, the Pope’s visit came as something that would lead to the final collapse of socialism in Cuba. They believed that the Revolution would tumble down like the walls of Jericho before the sound of trumpets. But the Pope did not bring trumpets, nor did he come with the intention of destroying the Revolution."
He reiterated that at that point anti-communist propaganda had created the myth that much merit was due the Pope for the collapse of the socialist camp and the USSR. "We tried to give him the reception that he merited, for which it was necessary to explain to many of our compatriots (as he did on television) the significance of that visit and to clarify John Paul II’s position to many people, and the historical and personal conditions that shaped his vision against socialism and communism.
The president went on to comment: "Now our enemies are once again disconcerted at the displays of consideration and affection expressed in Cuba after the death of John Paul II. They are once again disorientated on observing that Cardinal Jaime Ortega has another opportunity to speak to the people on television in relation to the demise of the leader of the Catholic Church in the world.
The only difficult moment during the pastoral visit, he added, was prompted by the words of the Archbishop of Santiago de Cuba during the papal mass in that city. The content of that address created a difficult situation for the people and Santiago Party members invited to the mass. "We weren’t concerned at what he said, but at the reaction and malaise of the people. It was confirmed to me that neither the Pope or Cardinal Jaime Ortega knew of the content of the archbishop’s speech."
Fidel also denounced the machinations of the empire and its lackeys, headed by Roger Noriega, at that time Senator Jesse Helms’ advisor, to spoil the Pope’s visit in 1998, made evident in Noriega’s meeting with the archbishop, the content of which the religious leader reported to the Party authorities.
"It was not us who politicized the visit; at no time did the Revolution attempt to seek material advantages or benefits for Cuba and its socialist process," Fidel observed, moving on to make a rapid reading of what he said in January 1998.
The president of the Councils of State and Ministers listed some of the factors that did not favor the Pope’s presence in Cuba over a number of years, including tensions and differences with the leadership of the Catholic Church in our country during the early years of the Revolution, although the island did have the cooperation of the then representative in Cuba of the Holy See: a man who worked intensively to alleviate and eliminate difficulties.
Fidel also reflected on the recently deceased Pope’s historical courage in publicly criticizing past errors of the Catholic Church such as the Inquisition or its refusal to accept Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution.
He detailed the facilities offered at all times by the Cuban government to different Catholic orders like that of St. Bridget, while clarifying that there neither is nor will be differences in respectful treatment in relation to the religions present in Cuba; on that point he gave as one example the inauguration of a Greek Orthodox Church and another Russian one in the future.
BUSH’S VISIT TO ROME IS AN
OUTRAGE TO THE POPE’S MEMORY
Fidel ratified that, from the beginning, the Cuban state and government had acknowledged and praised John Paul II for his stand against the proliferation of nuclear weapons, for being a great standard-bearer in the fight against wars of aggression, territorial conquests, ethnic cleansing and the external debt. At the same time he was a fervent critic of neoliberal globalization and the consumerist nature of the capitalist societies and policies that accelerate environmental degradation. He recalled that the Pope made those and other important condemnations in the United Nations.
For Fidel, the tribute that should be paid to the deceased religious leader is to put his humanist ideas into practice. He castigated the hypocrites who are ignorant of this legacy and are among those principally responsible for the evils humanity is suffering, including the president of the country that produces the largest volume of nuclear weapons and the mobile means to launch them any day, at any moment, on whatever corner of the planet.
He highlighted the hypocrisy of "mister chief of imperialism," who is attending the funeral to weep over the body of a man who fervently opposed war, and the invasion of Iraq. Bush’s visit to Rome, he stated, is an outrage to the memory of John Paul II.
Referring to the constant US government pressure on the Revolution, he noted that on repeated occasions the empire demanded as condition for the lifting of the blockade "to withdraw our internationalist aid to Angola, Ethiopia, to break off our relations with the Soviet Union and end our support for revolutionary movements in Latin America." He recalled: "We never accepted that and that support only ceased to exist when those forces were extinguished by themselves.
He affirmed that the course of history, of so many struggles of the people against the oppressors, has been renewed with a tremendous and unstoppable force, particularly in the Our America dreamed of by MartÃ. One example of that rebirth is Venezuela, with its revolutionary Bolivarian process and Hugo Chávez.
In another part of his address, the president spoke of Hugo Chávez as a revolutionary of the ideas of BolÃvar and MartÃ, with correct interpretations of Christianity, as his thinking takes into account the Christ who was always on the side of the poor. Fidel observed that Chávez has known how to evaluate the history and traditions of his people.
THE HUMANISM OF THE REVOLUTION
"Nothing can compare with the pages of humanism that our glorious people are writing," Fidel affirmed, giving the example of the attention received by thousands of Ukrainian children and adolescents affected by the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power station, and with the uncontestable reality that, as opposed to what occurred in other countries of our own region on the part of dictatorships installed by imperialism, not one person has been tortured, killed or disappeared in Cuba.
"That same empire wants to condemn us at the Human Rights Commission," he stated. "Let them do what they like; I don’t give a toss and the people of Cuba don’t give a toss about the Geneva commission," he added before going on to ask what the Europeans are going to do in the next few days when the a vote is taken on the anti-Cuba resolution to be presented by the government of the United States.
"All of them, without exception," he warned, "will come up against a blade that is constantly more honed; in other words, with a stronger Revolution whose humanistic work based on social justice is on the ascent."
He noted that while the United States is trying to condemn Cuba for alleged human rights violations and demanding the release of mercenaries serving prison terms in our country due to their counterrevolutionary activities, it is maintaining five young Cuban anti-terrorist fighters incarcerated in its own jails.
(MarÃa Julia Mayoral, Anett RÃos, José A. de la Osa, Alexis Schlachter and Alberto Núñez)
tp://www.granma.cu/ingles/2005/abril/vier8/16fpapa-i.html
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GRANMA INTERNATIONAL
Havana. April 5, 2005
Havana. April 5, 2005
FIDEL AND RAUL EXPRESS CONDOLENCES
AT THE DEATH OF POPE JOHN PAUL II
Funeral mass celebrated in Havana Cathedral
http://granmai.cubaweb.com/ingles/2005/abril/mar5/15fidraulp.html
AT THE DEATH OF POPE JOHN PAUL II
Funeral mass celebrated in Havana Cathedral
http://granmai.cubaweb.com/ingles/2005/abril/mar5/15fidraulp.html
BY MARIA JULIA MAYORAL
Granma daily staff writer
Granma daily staff writer
CUBAN President Fidel Castro and First Vice President Raúl Castro expressed their condolences at the death of his Holiness Pope John Paul II in the condolence book at the seat of Havana’s Apostolic Nunciature.
Wearing dark suits, Fidel and Raúl arrived at the seat, located in Miramar, shortly before 5:00 p.m. accompanied by Felipe Pérez Roque, foreign minister, Carlos Valenciaga, member of the Council of State and Caridad Diego, head of the Religious Affairs Office of the Communist Party. There, they were received by Monsignor Luigi Bonazzi, papal nuncio in our country.
Many leaders of the Revolution and Cubans, believers and non- believers went to the Nunciature to sign the condolence book.
A funeral mass for His Holiness Pope John Paul II was celebrated in a packed Havana Cathedral, attended by President Fidel Castro.
Over 1,000 people inside the cathedral and many others standing outside, listened to the homily given by Cardinal Jaime Ortega Alamino, who recalled the Pope as a person who worked untiringly for peace in the world, Christian unity, rapprochement with the Jews, the promotion of inter-religious dialogue and the merging of science and faith.
Havana’s archbishop affirmed that the church and the world have lost a man who was a reference point in terms of his firm ethical position, who communicated to the world security and confidence in the destiny of humankind and who stirred consciences with his appeal to be ethically responsible for the future, which he did with exceptional power of communication.
“As a messenger of truth and hope, we recall his visit to Cuba. During those days of his stay among us, some men and women from our people said things to us like this: “these have been four days in which our hearts have opened up,’” Cardinal Ortega reflected.
In celebrating the Holy Eucharist, Cardinal Ortega, who is also the president of the Cuban Synod of Catholic Bishops, asked that from his happy eternity, Pope John Paul II would continue accompanying the Cuban people and Church, “so that the testimony of his life and his loving dedication will bear fruit among us. “
In the ceremony, Monsignor Luigi Bonazzi, the papal nuncio in Cuba, affirmed that the world belongs to those who most love it and know best how to express it, for in the end, those are the sentiments that endure; for that reason John Paul II remains with us, for he made of his life a continuous act of love towards the Church and the world. The representative of the Holy See also reflected on the Pope’s visit to our country in 1998. As he stated, that was an encounter prepared with much attention by the Cuban civilian and religious authorities. He added that they were four days of genuine celebration, born from a communion of all Cubans, drawn by the Holy Father’s presence.
The mass was attended by members of the Political Bureau, including Ricardo Alarcón, Carlos Lage, Esteban Lazo, Abel Prieto and Pedro Sáez as well as Felipe Pérez Roque, minister of foreign affairs; a large group of ministers and members of the highest ranks of the government leadership; Caridad Diego, head of the Office of Religious Affairs of the Central Committee of the Communist Party; and Armando Hart Dávalos, head of the Martà Program Office, among other revolutionary leaders. Representatives of other Christian churches and religious denominations were likewise present at the mass, as well as members of the accredited diplomatic corps in Havana.
President Fidel Castro Pays Tribute to Pope John Paul II
Havana, Apr 5 (Prensa Latina) Cuba´s President Fidel Castro praised Pope John Paul II for his support of world peace and defense of the poor before joining other government officials, diplomats and church leaders at Havana´s Cathedral for a funeral Mass in honor to the late pontiff.
Before attending mass, led by Cuban Cardinal Jaime Ortega, Fidel Castro, dressed in a dark suit and tie, signed the condolence book at the Papal Nunciature, the Vatican Embassy in Havana, where he highlighted the Pope as a fighter for peace and the poor.
"Rest in peace, tireless fighter for friendship among peoples, enemy of war and friend of the poor," Castro wrote in the condolences book at the Papal Nunciature, the Vatican´s mission in Havana.
Accompanied by his brother, Defense Minister Raul Castro, and Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque, President Castro also recalled John Paul as an "unforgettable friend" who would be remembered on the island for speaking out against the U.S. blockade during his January 1998 visit.
"This earned you the gratitude and the affection of all Cubans forever," Castro wrote.
The Cuban president also wrote that the efforts by those who wanted to use the pontiff´s prestige and enormous spiritual authority against the just cause of the Cuban people in their struggle against the giant empire (the United States) were in vain.
Fidel Castro underlined, "you visited us in difficult times and you were able to feel the nobility, spirit of solidarity and moral value of the people who welcomed you with special respect and affection".
Before signing the book, he finished his tribute stressing: "we wish fervently that your example lives forever".
Cuban Army General and First Vice President Raul Castro had previously signed the condolences book in which he wrote, "John Paul II, His Holiness, fought in favor of the poor, struggled for peace. We will remember him with respect and profound friendship."
The Cuban government has declared three days of national mourning for the Pope´s death and canceled all recreational and festive events. The Cuban flag is flying at half mast in all public buildings and military institutions.
April, 2005
STATEMENT TO THE NATIONAL AND FOREIGN MEDIA
BY THE MINISTER OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS
MR. FELIPE PÉREZ ROQUE
HAVANA, 2 APRIL 2005. 16:00 HRS.
Foto: Roberto Morejón
The Cuban people and government have followed closely and with extreme interest, as have other peoples of the world, the evolution on the health of His Holiness Pope John Paul II.
It is with profound grief that we have now learned of his passing away. We always saw Pope John Paul II, and we will continue to see him, as a friend. Somebody concerned about the poor, who fought neoliberalism and struggled for peace.
We will always remember with gratitude his visit to our country in 1998, his friendly words. We will always remember, as well, his statement against the blockade endured by our people, which he regarded as “restrictive economic measures imposed from outside the country, unjust and ethically unacceptable.”
Our people welcomed him with respect and sympathy. Our people and our government will not forget the Pope’s visit to our country, his cordial welcome to President Fidel Castro on the occasion of his visit to the Vatican, and we will never forget the imprint that his visit left in us.
In this moment we express our message of condolences, of respect for and solidarity with the Catholic faithful, in Cuba and around the world.
We are also informing that all activities relating to the funerals will be extensively covered in our country.
We will proceed to send an official message of condolences from President Fidel Castro to His Very Reverend Eminence, Cardinal Eduardo MartÃnez Somalo, Chamberlain of the Holy Roman Church.
http://www.cubaminrex.cu/English/Statements/declaracion020405.htm
http://www.cubaminrex.cu/English/Statements/declaracion020405.htm
 Foreign Minister Perez Roque signs condolence book in Havana Papal Nuncio Luigi Bonazzi to his left |
 |
Havana City Historian Eusebio Leal
announces Cuban photo exhibition
UNFORGETTABLE FRIEND
Photo Exhibition Opened in Havana to Honor John Paul II
announces Cuban photo exhibition
UNFORGETTABLE FRIEND
Photo Exhibition Opened in Havana to Honor John Paul II
Havana, April 8 (AIN) A photo exhibition was opened Friday at the Jose Marti Memorial, in Havana´s Revolution Square, to pay tribute to His Holiness John Paul II.
The exhibition was inaugurated by the director of the Jose Marti Program Armando Hart Davalos in the presence of Culture Minister Abel Prieto and other personalities.
Also present at the opening were Jose Miyar, secretary of the Cuban Council of State, Communist Party officials as well as the papal nuncio in Cuba, Luigi Bonazzi, and representatives of the island's religious community.
Havana historian Eusebio Leal stressed that Pope John Paul II was a sincere friend of Cuba, a country for which he expressed his own predilection in repeated affectionate messages.
Leal also recalled the friendly relationship between Cuban President Fidel Castro and the Holy Father who passed away last Saturday, aged 84. Leal said that his legacy will transcend the ages and added that he was able to face up to the big challenge of the century, wars, which he detested like all good men who love and fight for permanent peace.
The photo exhibition, which will be open to the public until April 22, is made up of 56 pictures depicting the official visit to the Vatican by Cuban President Fidel Castro in 1996, and his meeting with Pope John Paul II, as well as the visit to Cuba by the Pope in 1998.
The exhibition also includes coins and medals commemorating the pontificate of Karol Wojtyla, who was Pope for more than 26 years.
Also present at the exhibition opening were Jose Miyar, secretary of the Cuban Council of State, Communist Party officials as well as the papal nuncio in Cuba, Luigi Bonazzi, and representatives of the island's religious community.
Cuban President Sends Condolences to the Vatican
Havana, April 4 (AIN) President Fidel Castro's message of condolences to the Vatican upon the death of Pope John Paul II was highlighted in the local media across Cuba.
Sunday's edition of the newspaper Juventud Rebelde published the official government statement as well as a decree establishing three days of mourning following the pontiff's passing.
The daily also included declarations by Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque, who expressed the nation's grief for the death of Pope John Paul II and added that the Cuban people will continue to see the Pontiff as a friend.
Several events will be suspended in honor of the Pope; these included festive activities that had been planned in Cuba on the occasion of the anniversaries of the Young Communist League and the Jose Marti Children's Organization.
In addition, the finals of the national baseball playoffs were postponed until after the three-day official mourning.
Regular radio and television programs were also modified, with more subdued music to be played, while ample news programming will be devoted to Pope John Paul II and details on his funeral.
The weekly Havana Tribuna's front page read, "World Saddened by Death of Pope John Paul II" and an article stated, "The Cuban people will always remember his visit to our country with gratitude."
A book of condolences was available for signing at the Vatican's diplomatic representation in Havana on Sunday afternoon and a funeral mass is scheduled for Monday night at the Havana cathedral.
Ricardo Alarcon Leads Cuban Delegation at Pope´s Funeral
Havana, Apr 5 (Prensa Latina) Cuban Parliament Chairman, Ricardo Alarcon, is heading Cuba"s delegation to Friday"s funeral of Pope John Paul II, who died last Saturday at the age of 84 due to kidney and respiratory failure.
Ricardo Alarcon Leads Cuban Delegation at Pope´s Funeral
Havana, Apr 5 (Prensa Latina) Cuban Parliament Chairman, Ricardo Alarcon, is heading Cuba"s delegation to Friday"s funeral of Pope John Paul II, who died last Saturday at the age of 84 due to kidney and respiratory failure.
The delegation is also made up of Caridad Diego, head of the Communist Party Central Committee"s Office for Religious Affairs, and Teresita Vicente, director of the Foreign Ministry for Europe.
The body of Pope Karol Wojtyla, his Polish name before becoming the Pontiff on October 18, 1978, is laying in state at San Pedro"s Roman Basilic main altar.
The Cuban government decreed three days of official mourning until Tuesday, suspending all sports events or celebrations on the anniversary of the Young Communist League. Flags will be hoisted half mast at all public and military institutions.
On his Jan. 21-15, 1998 visit to Cuba, John Paul II was greeted with the sympathy from the government and people as a restless champion of peace. During his visit he condemned the over four-decade "unfair and unacceptable restrictive measures forced on the Island".
Cuba's Ricardo Alarcon meets
Brazil's Lula in Rome.
Cuba's Ricardo Alarcon meets
Brazil's Lula in Rome.
msl/emw/acl/mf
Genuine and Spontaneous
Cuban Reaction to Pope's Death
Havana, April 4 (AIN) The charisma and sense of justice of Pope John Paul II both outside and inside the Catholic Church brought a genuine and spontaneous reaction from the Cuban people upon his death.
Cuban Reaction to Pope's Death
Havana, April 4 (AIN) The charisma and sense of justice of Pope John Paul II both outside and inside the Catholic Church brought a genuine and spontaneous reaction from the Cuban people upon his death.
In statements to the press in Havana, Caridad Diego, head of the Office of Religious Affairs at the Central Committee of Cuba's Communist Party, said the Pontiff was a renowned international figure with close contact to the people resulting from his visits to 129 countries.
The Cuban official pointed out that Pope John Paul II had seen with his own eyes the problems of humanity and highlighted his criticism against exploitation and savage capitalism.
She added that that the Pope was a man loyal to his ideas and convictions. He was a figure that fought for peace and against war, said Caridad Diego,
After describing the Pope's visit to Cuba on January 1998 as historic, Diego said that the sentiment of sorrow and pain of the Cuban people is genuine and spontaneous for the death of the head of the Roman Catholic Church, with which the island has maintained diplomatic relations since 1935.
The Religious Affairs official pointed out that Cuba has been following closely the Pontiff's health and that the Cuban Catholic Church has received the support of the local authorities and government.
Pope John Paul II, who will be buried on Friday, was a figure that expressed affection towards the island and recalled that on various occasions he had criticized Washington's economic blockade against Cuba, said Caridad Diego.
Cuban Foreign Minister Offers
Condolences at Vatican Embassy
Condolences at Vatican Embassy
Havana, April 4 (AIN) Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque expressed the Cuban people's sentiment of respect towards Pope John Paul II after signing the book of condolences on Sunday at the Vatican embassy in Havana.
Luigi Bonazzi, the Vatican representative in Havana, welcomed Perez Roque, who was accompanied by the head of the Office for Religious Affairs of the Central Committee of Cuban Communist Party, Caridad Diego Bello.
Upon the death of the Pontiff on Saturday, the Cuban government announced "We express our condolences, our respect and solidarity to Catholic believers in Cuba and the rest of the World."
The foreign minister informed that all activities related to the funeral services, scheduled for Friday, April 8, will receive ample coverage by the Cuban media.
Perez Roque recalled his people's gratitude for the Pontiff's visit made to Cuba in January, 1998. He said Cubans will always remember his declaration against the US blockade of the island, which he described as unjust and ethically unacceptable.
The Vatican representative pointed to the sorrow expressed by the Cuban people for the physical disappearance of Pope John Paul II who passed away at the age of 84.
The Council of State of the Republic of Cuba declared three days of official mourning. The decree, signed by Cuban President Fidel Castro, ordered the national flag to fly at half mast at public buildings and military installations for a period of three days staring April 3rd.
In addition, festive activities that were programmed on the island on the occasion of the anniversaries of the Young Communist League and the Jose Marti Children's Organization were suspended.
Even the finals of the national baseball playoffs between Santiago de Cuba and Havana Province were postponed until the end of the national mourning.
John Paul II and Fidel Castro:
Two Historic Meetings
Two Historic Meetings
Havana, Apr 4 (Prensa Latina) Seven years ago, when Pope John Paul II visited Havana, the whole world closely followed his historic meeting with Cuban President Fidel Castro.
That was not the first time they met. In November 1996, John Paul and Fidel Castro held talks at the Vatican. "It was a miracle," the Cuban leader said then.
Fidel Castro considered it a miracle that such an extraordinary person had granted an interview with a modest revolutionary fighter and politician.
Fidel Castro considered it a miracle that such an extraordinary person had granted an interview with a modest revolutionary fighter and politician.
"I do not have merits for people to consider my contacts with the Pope extraordinary. His humbleness and greatness to receive me is what should be highlighted," he maintained.
Media and people expecting differences between the Island leader and John Paul II largely covered their meeting, which was mostly characterized by respect and mutual admiration.
Upon arrival in Havana on February 26 1998, when the Cuban statesman and ecclesiastic authorities received him, the Supreme Pontiff said he felt profoundly satisfied.
"It is a great pleasure to greet President Fidel Castro, who had the gesture of receiving me and to whom I want to convey my gratitude for his warm welcome," the Pope noted.
Fidel told John Paul they shared views on many key international issues but he respected those on which they differ and the profound principles upon which his ideas were based.
"Here you will meet an educated population with which you can freely talk about everything. They are talented people, with a vast political culture, profound convictions, knowledge and respect to listen to your words," added the president of the Caribbean country.
On his second day in Havana, John Paul paid a courtesy visit to his host, with whom he met for 45 minutes and exchanged gifts.
Closing the visit, Fidel Castro congratulated the Pope for the example they had given the world.
"You, by visiting what some people nicknamed the last communist stronghold, we, by receiving the religious leader they wanted to blame for the break-up of socialism in Europe," he stressed.
Meanwhile, John Paul II publicly condemned the US blockade on Cuba. "It is unjust and unacceptable," he denounced.
Thus, John Paul II left the Cuban people and their leader with a message of peace and love.
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Pope John Paul II in Havana's Revolution Square
Havana, Apr 4 (Prensa Latina) The mass that Pope John Paul II gave on January 26, 1998 at Havana´s Revolution Square caused particular emotion among Cubans and undoubtedly the Pope himself.
That emotional day, like others during the first visit by a chief of the Vatican State to the Island, is recalled today by all Cubans, who respectfully mourn his death.
Cuban President Fidel Castro, wearing an elegant suit, sat in the first row of seats reserved for dignitaries and special guests in the audience, very attentive to the message of the Pope in his fourth and last mass in Cuba.
"Cuba, friend, the Pope is with you!" were his first words to hundreds of thousands of people that jammed Revolution Square, with a massive statue of Jose Marti witnessing the historic event.
John Paul II had already seen the site during the tour he made of Havana the day he arrived in Cuba, amid a crowd that welcomed him with impressive hospitality.
Five days later, thousands of Cubans, believers and non-believers, crowded the square on that winter, sunny morning. "I feel very happy to be here with you to celebrate the Sunday Eucharist," said the Pope.
He had arrived in his jeep, which came along an open path with people on both sides. The Cuban president was accompanied by Colombian writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Nobel Prize winner in Literature. Hundreds of foreign guests, invited by the government, Cuba´s ecclesiastical hierarchy, or simple parishioners, were also present.
He spoke of faith, relations between the State and religion, and the search of justice and freedom. He also noted "capitalist neoliberalism subdues human beings and nations´ development to the blind forces of market, charging the least developed countries with intolerable taxes."
"This way, some nations allow for the exaggerated enrichment of a few at the expense of impoverishment of a growing minority, making the rich richer and the poor poorer." These were among the most applauded remarks from an audience that knew and agreed with them.
The same happened when he advocated the Church should continue speaking of social issues as long as the world witnesses acts of injustice, no matter how insignificant they are.
The Pope then said Cuba must "overcome isolation," something that Cubans interpreted as a critical reference to the US blockade against the Island.
This would not be the last remark on the issue.
When the ceremony concluded, President Fidel Castro walked to the stage and they both greeted cordially, as on other occasions during his visit, thus strengthening a relation of respect and sympathy.
Seven years later, Cubans still remember him.
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Cuban front pages - April 2005Front Page of Granma daily on the Pope's death http://www.granma.cubaweb.cu/2005/04/04/plana.jpg
Front page of Tribuna, on the Pope's death: http://www.tribuna.islagrande.cu/PDF/pdf030405.jpg
Front page of Juventud Rebelde on the Pope's death: http://www.jrebelde.cu/2005/abril-junio/abril-3/portadab.html
Juventud Rebelde: Cubans honor a good pastor http://www.jrebelde.cubaweb.cu/2005/abril-junio/abril-5/portadab.html
Front page of Granma with Fidel's speech on the Pope http://www.granma.cubaweb.cu/2005/04/08/plana.jpg
Front page of Juventud Rebelde with Fidel's speech on the Pope http://www.jrebelde.cubaweb.cu/2005/abril-junio/abril-8/portadab.html
La Jiribilla file on the Pope (Spanish) http://www.lajiribilla.cu/2005/n204_04/204_39.html
Democracy Now! on the pope's legacy http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/04/04/1336240
The Politicization of Religion in Transitional Cuba http://hiphi.ubbcluj.ro/JSRI/html%20version/index/no_8/kathleentobin-articol.htm
Lisandro Otero: The last vestiges of the Cold War dies with Wojtyla http://www.walterlippmann.com/docs120.html
Frei Betto: Liberation Theology and the Pope http://www.walterlippmann.com/docs125.html
Frei Betto: Liberation Theology and the Pope http://www.walterlippmann.com/docs125.html
Jonathan Steele: Gorbachev, Not the Pope, Ended Communism
http://www.gulf-times.com/site/topics/article.asp?cu_no=2&item_no=32832&version=1&template_id=46&parent_id=26
http://www.gulf-times.com/site/topics/article.asp?cu_no=2&item_no=32832&version=1&template_id=46&parent_id=26
A Cuban priestess of the Afro-Cuban Santeria religion attends mass at the Cathedral of Havana April 3, 2005. Cubans filled churches for services for Pope John Paul II, the only
pontiff to set foot on the island. It was a 1998 visit that brought greater religious freedom,
though not the opening up of the West's last Marxist state that many had expected. Cuban
President Fidel Castro decreed three days of official mourning and suspended planned
Communist Youth festivities and the finals of the official baseball league.
03 Apr 2005 REUTERS/Claudia Daut
The Pope's 1998 Visit to CubaPapal visit coverage, Granma International January 1998 http://granmai.cubaweb.com/juanpablo/ingles/index-i.html
Pacifica radio Democracy NOW! on the Pope's 1998 visit http://www.democracynow.org/search.pl?query=Cuba+Pope
Nelson Valdes: The Last Revolutionary Offensive of Fidel Castro http://www.walterlippmann.com/npv-01-27-1998.html
Nelson Valdes: Miami After The Pope's Visit to Cuba http://www.walterlippmann.com/npv-1998.html
Karen Lee Wald: Popes, Prostitutes and Prisoners (1999) http://www.nscuba.org/Docs/Kwald/PPP.html
Cuba Meets The Pope -- And Both Walk Away Winners (1998) http://www.blythe.org/nytransfer-subs/Caribbean/.kwald.html
Assata and the Pope (1999) http://www.iacenter.org/shakpope.htm
Linard: Guarded Raprochement between Rome and Havana http://mondediplo.com/1998/01/02habana?var_recherche=Cuba
Jeanette Habel: Banking on the Church (1997) http://mondediplo.com/1997/02/15cuba
Speeches by Pope John Paul in Cuba (in English) http://ordendemaltacuba.com/governanceofthecubanassociation.aspx
Speeches by Pope John Paul in Cuba (in English) http://ordendemaltacuba.com/governanceofthecubanassociation.aspx
Anti-Communist Pope failed to open up Castro's Cuba
By Anthony Boadle
Updated: 3:35 p.m. ET April 2, 2005
HAVANA - Pope John Paul II helped bring down the Berlin Wall, but hardly dented Cuban Communism despite a landmark visit that many thought would open up the Western Hemisphere's last Marxist state.
Chants of "Freedom, Freedom" rang out during a mass the pontiff held in Havana's Revolution Square on Jan 25, 1998, attended by more than 300,000 Cubans, including President Fidel Castro, who smiled occasionally.
The Pope called on Cuba to open up to the world, while condemning the evils of both communism and capitalism in his homily in the massive square, symbolic home of Castro's 1959 revolution.
"She needs to open herself to the world and the world needs to draw close to Cuba," he said.
The five-day visit was the first by a pontiff to the Caribbean island and came as the one-party state's grip was slipping amid a deep economic crisis and isolation that followed the demise of the Soviet Union.
Many Cubans, aware of the impact of the Pope's triumphant trips to his once communist homeland Poland, hoped the visit would speed social change and relieve their hardship.
Castro, who had a Jesuit school education, declared Cuba an atheist state after his revolution ousted a right-wing dictator.
Spanish priests were expelled, churches closed and many Catholics sent to labor camps, including the current Archbishop of Havana and Cuba's top prelate, Cardinal Jaime Ortega.
In 1992, however, as Havana began negotiations with the Vatican for a papal visit, atheism was officially dropped. Cubans, even members of the ruling Communist Party, could become believers, read the Bible in public, wear crosses and go to mass without fear of persecution.
Christmas was reinstated as a holiday in December, 1997, as a gesture to the Vatican ahead of John Paul's visit.
The government allowed religious processions outside church buildings for the first time, and the Pope's open-air masses were broadcast live on state-run television.
"EXTERMINATING ANGEL"
But the coming of the man dubbed the "exterminating angel" of Communism, even by Castro himself, had little impact other than greater freedom of worship for Catholics and followers of other Christian faiths.
During the visit, world attention was distracted by the eruption of a sex scandal involving President Bill Clinton. American television anchors hastily packed their bags in Havana and rushed back to Washington to cover the breaking Monica Lewinsky case of sex in the White House.
Once back in Rome, the Pope compared his Cuban trip to the one he made in 1979 to his native Poland and hoped it would set off a train of events that would benefit the Cuban people.
Two weeks later, Castro did concede to the pontiff's plea for the release of political prisoners, and Cuba freed more than 300 people from its jails.
But the Roman Catholic Church's quest for access to education and the media -- a radio station was suggested -- were denied.
"The visit was a major event for the Church," said Father Jose Corado, the priest at Santa Teresita parish in the eastern city of Santiago. "A Church, that had been confined to its temples for so long, took to the streets."
While in Cuba, the Pope united the people, telling them the future was in their hands. They enthusiastically listened to his message about opening up to the world.
But the aftermath was a disappointment, as authorities moved to curb the impact of the visit, Corado said. "There have been no advances," the priest said.
In March 2003, Cuba cracked down on dissent and jailed 75 pro-democracy activists, half of them from a civil liberties campaign called the Varela Project, led by Christian Democrat Oswaldo Paya. Three men who hijacked a ferry in a bid to reach Florida were summarily executed by firing squad in April.
The Pope expressed "deep pain" at the executions in a letter to Castro in which he also appealed for clemency for the imprisoned dissidents. He got no reply.
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Religion in Cuba
Cuba shares a common history with Latin America, starting with the conquest and European colonization, but there are some differences. One of these is the fate of its indigenous peoples.
Cuba shares a common history with Latin America, starting with the conquest and European colonization, but there are some differences. One of these is the fate of its indigenous peoples.
In most of the continent, especially where the great pre-Columbian civilizations were located, for various reasons the aboriginal cultures maintained deep roots, and within that culture, the religious practices of those peoples. But in the Antilles there was a rapid extermination of the native peoples, and as a result the traces of their religious beliefs were less perceptible.
It has been confirmed that Caribbean cultures such as the Arawacs who inhabited Cuba had a faith with strong elements of animism, magic and mythology. The supernatural was represented by a group of deities represented by their cemis (handmade figures), they had festivals such as areÃtosand defined priestly duties associated with cures, predictions and preserving traditions.
The Spanish conquistadors imposed their culture, their language, their civilization, their form of representing and interpreting reality and reacting to it, and of course their religion, Catholicism. With the backing of colonial authorities, for a long time Catholicism was the official and exclusive religion of the territory.
However, due to the arrival on the island of hundreds of slaves from Africa, during the colonial era, various religious manifestations were introduced by the different African peoples who made up that human cargo.
Since then, the Spanish and African cultures have constituted the main ethno-cultural roots of Cuban nationality, with influences from other cultures (the Caribbean, the United States, China and the rest of Europe), in a complex process of transculturation and racial mixture which has had the consequence of creating a completely unique religious composition.
The original African religions were modified by the conditions in Cuba when their bearers were uprooted from their natural environment, and submitted to cultural involution and interethnic relations. This led to a variation of their myths and cult objects. Many of the African precepts mixed with those of Catholicism, resulting in a symbiosis which has lasted to the present day.
Due to the rigors of slavery, rites of protection and divination took preference while others - such as those related to fertility - were reduced in importance. Thus various Afro-Cuban religious expressions developed.
Out of the Yoruba culture came Regla Ocha, popularly known as SanterÃa, centered around a set of orichas (deities) with different myths and attributes. Among the most important orichas are Olofin, Olorun or Oloddumare, deity of creation.
The leaders of SanterÃa are santeros (babalochas) and santeras (iyalochas), with other secondary leaders and functions. The most systematized and complex form of this religion is the cult of Ifá, the deity whose main attribute is divination, sustained by the maximum religious authorities, the babalawos.
Out of the practices of the peoples from the kingdom of the Congo came what in Cuba is called Regla Conga, Palo Monte or Palo Mayombe, a set of religious forms centered on the cult of natural forces.
An important element of this creed is the nganga, the recipient bringing together a variety of objects and organic and mineral substances in which the "fundament" of the religion is believed to reside, and it is zealously guarded by the leaders of the cult. The highest level is Tata Nganga, who have empirical knowledge about endogenous medicinal plants. Mayombe, Brillumba and Kimbisa are cults which sprang up in Cuba.
Another African religion, based in western Cuba, is Abakuá, a secret society for men only, also known as ñañiguismo. It emerged at the start of the 19th century and is similar to organizations from the Nigerian zone of Calabar, the land of the CarabalÃs.
These associations have an orientation of mutual protection and aid, in accordance with mythology. They are organized in groups called plazas, with a team of leaders who have varying ritual and organizational functions.
Various other less popular religions are also practiced in western Cuba, coming from different ethnic groups, such as Arará and Iyesá.
The religious cults of African origin have less theoretical, ethical and doctrinal development than Christian religions. They concentrate on representational systems, symbols and rites based on myths and linked to nature, the ancestors (spirits) and daily life.
In the Abakuá societies, structures have been created that apply to several local groups, and within SanterÃa there are units such as the Yoruba Cultural Association of Cuba, representing a considerable number of babalawos or priests of the Ifá cult.
These religious expressions, in particular SanterÃa, are very well accepted by the population, but due to the fact that religious practice is non-institutional (except for Abakuá, which has temples, these activities are carried out in the practitioners' homes), it is difficult to calculate the number of believers, cult leaders and groups.
African influences are seen in Cuba in the daily activities of men and women on the street and in national culture, especially music, dance, musical instruments and visual arts.
Spiritualism, a religious mixture of U.S. pragmatism and philosophical empiricism which first emerged in the United States and took hold throughout Europe, is widespread in Cuban society. It arrived in Cuba during the mid-1800s and extended first to the areas where the wars of independence were being fought. Several tendencies began to appear, mixed with elements of African religions and Christianity and tied very strongly to daily life. These forms are practiced collectively, in spiritualist centers and associations, as well as in consultations with individual mediums, but without a federation to bind them together, although at the present time there are signs of growing unity.
Protestant religions were introduced in Cuba relatively late because they were blocked by colonial legislation protecting the Catholic Church. The first major Protestant organizations were founded at the end of the 19th century on the initiative of Cubans who had emigrated to the United States, although the most stable denominations were founded later on, following the U.S. intervention in 1898.
Protestantism proliferated during the first 50 years of the Republic with the support of U.S. missionary groups. As a result, many of the Cuban groups adopted the missionary model and a diversity of denominations typical of U.S. society were established.
There are other religious groups with lower numbers of practitioners, some associated with poor immigrants such as Haitians (voodoo) and Chinese peasants, whose religious contribution is little known. In both cases, only a portion of the Cuban descendents of those nationalities continue to practice those religious creeds.
Judaism is also practiced on the island, and there are several synagogues.
Eastern philosophical and religious sects exist, such as the Theosophical Society and Baha'i, among others.
As for Masons, there are currently more than 26,000 in Cuba, registered at 314 lodges throughout national territory. The area with the largest number of members and groups is Havana.
Freedom of religion is guaranteed by the Constitution of the Republic of Cuba.
(Taken from: CubasÃ)
The Pope in Cuba
An indelible impression was left on Cubans by the visit of His Holiness John Paul II, on January 21 thru 25, 1998. Unforgettable moments of this pastoral trip were gathered in the CD “The Pope in Cuba”, edited by Genesis Multimedia: |
MSNBC.com
God's Man in Havana
Updated: 8:03 p.m. ET April 1, 2005
From the issue dated Jan. 19, 1998 - Near the end of the millennium, in the heat of Havana, two aging ideological adversaries meet. One is a canny, mystical man of God and fervent anti-communist; the other is the last romantic revolutionary to head a Marxist state. The military is everywhere and edgy. The people, many of them wide-eyed laborers just in from the cane fields, are in a restless festival mood. Pickpockets and prostitutes work the crowd. Suddenly, a flag featuring the image of the Virgin is unfurled in the Plaza de la Revolucion, Havana's largest open space. And then . . . No, this is not a scene from a Graham Greene novel. But were he alive, the novelist would undoubtedly be in Cuba next week, when Pope John Paul II begins his long-anticipated visit to Fidel Castro's Cuba.
As it is, 3,000 journalists from around the world are expected to descend on the island nation to record the historic event. What do they hope to see? After all, Cuba isn't China, and Castro is no longer a threat to anyone except, perhaps, his own destitute people. And the pope is not the vigorous presence he used to be. The two have met once before, when Castro visited the pope at the Vatican in 1996. What can either man now gain from the other? What meaning is there in this meeting between septuagenarians on the far Caribbean shoal of international politics?
Just this: we are watching two of the last actors in a dying century's deadliest drama, the battle between God and militant, state-sponsored atheistic humanism. Marx thought the forces of history would overturn God and bring heaven to earth in communism's classless society. But Marx is gone and communism stands betrayed by history itself. At the end of the millennium, God endures, capitalism prevails and, in the person of John Paul II, the party of human solidarity now wears a craggy Christian face.
Both men are revolutionaries, though of a different stripe. Castro's revolution was won with rifles, in 1959. The Polish pope initiated a revolution of ideas and hope—with no shots fired. His first visit to Poland, just months after his election to the papacy in 1978, rallied a subject nation and helped set in motion a democratic wave that eventually brought down the Berlin wall in 1989 and the subsequent collapse of the Soviet Union. Once again, the pope finds himself in an economically depleted communist country. Could it happen again?
Not likely. Cuba isn't Catholic Poland and the visiting pope is not a Cuban returning to his people. Castro is not—as Wojciech Jaruzelski was—a hated general propped up by Moscow. Where is the pope's army? Although 40 percent of Cuba's 11 million people are baptized Roman Catholics (another million, mostly evangelicals, are Protestant), only a minority know even the rudiments of their faith. How could they? The church has only about 260 priests and Cubans with any ambition dare not let the government's neighborhood watchdogs see them entering a church. Castro put all private schools under government control in 1961 and, although he has relaxed some restrictions in the past seven years, he still forbids religious processions in the streets. Only after papal prodding did he permit the open celebration of Christmas last year. Indeed, on the eve of the papal visit, the question most often asked by Cubans is "Who is the pope?"
After 36 years of official state atheism, most Cubans have never seen, heard or read about John Paul II—or any of his predecessors. A video prepared by the Cuban church suggests just how ignorant most Catholics are about their own religion. The pope, it explains, is the leader of the Catholic Church. He travels around the world preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ and has particular concern for the poor. This pope was born in Poland but now he lives in the Vatican, which is inside Rome, in Italy. Pretty basic stuff, but for the last three months Cuba's state-controlled television has refused to broadcast it. "We wanted to show that [the pope] is not just one more head of state," says Gustavo Andujar, a lay Catholic who coproduced the film, "but that he is the spiritual leader of 1 billion Catholics around the world."
The Vatican insists that the pope's mission is pastoral, not political. But in Cuba the real spiritual leader—indeed the reigning deity—is the Virgin of Charity, the nation's patron saint. Every Catholic sanctuary, and probably every Cuban home, contains a replica of the Virgin, whom the church identifies with the Mother of Jesus. The pope, whose devotion to Mary has no equal, will crown her statue in El Cobre in what may well turn out to be the most emotionally charged moment of his five-day sweep across the island. There he is expected to proclaim Our Lady's sovereignty over Cuba—just as he rallied Catholic Poland to "the Queen of Poland" at the shrine of the Black Madonna in 1979. But Our Lady of Charity is also a major goddess of Santeria—"The Way of the Saints"—an African religion imported by slaves and the faith to which 60 percent of Cubans (including millions of Catholics) give their primary religious allegiance. In short, the pope may find himself in the odd position of extolling a syncretistic figure of Afro-Cuban religion to a nation that barely recognizes the figure of Jesus Christ.
John Paul will have ample opportunities to evangelize the Cubans. In addition to a private meeting with Castro he will address an audience of intellectuals at the University of Havana. Castro is permitting four outdoor papal masses and will make half of the island's buses, trucks and other forms of transportation available to move the faithful. But it is still unclear whether the government will allow the papal festivities to be televised live. The risk to Castro is plain: the Cubans may not know much about the papacy, but they are religious enough to be energized by the mystique of John Paul II. On such a stage, this pope is always in his element—the singer of a new song.
What will he say? Certainly he will address the decay in Cuban family values. There are four divorces for every six marriages, and the state's marriage tax only adds incentive to the widespread practice of common-law cohabitation. The abortion rate is high—60 for every 100 births and 26 for every 1,000 women between the ages of 12 and 19. Some women have four or more abortions before giving birth to their first child. This pope is given to moralizing—that's his job. But in Cuba he is not confronting the usual lifestyle liberals. It's tough to start and sustain a family in an economy that cannot feed its own people or trade with its wealthy Yankee neighbor. How to advance the Christian vision of sex and marriage in this environment will be one of the pope's more difficult challenges.
John Paul is also expected to denounce the U.S. embargo on Cuba. This alone may be worth the price of the pope's admission for Castro. Castro's strategy, especially after the loss of subsidies from the former Soviet Union, has been to isolate the United States from Europe over the embargo issue. The pope has long opposed economic embargoes because of their effects on civilian populations, but he and Castro have more than this issue in common. Both share the view that unregulated capitalism is the enemy of human solidarity, and that every economic system must be measured by the demands of social justice. Here again, the pope must measure his words in speaking to one of the last Marxist heads of state.
What the pope wants most, however, is breathing room for the Cuban church. Access to media is one issue, the right to hold outdoor religious processions, a ritual dear to all Latin Americans, is another. Above all, he wants Castro to admit more foreign priests and nuns, and down the road, perhaps, the return of Catholic schools, where Castro himself was educated. But if his speeches in Poland are any measure, the pope will call for something more comprehensive: the resurrection of a true civil society in Cuba, one in which the people, through unions, churches and other organizations, can exercise their liberties and make social solidarity—there's that word again—a reality.
Will Castro listen? During his previous visit with the pope at the Vatican, Castro expounded his beliefs at length. When he invited the pope to comment, John Paul urged the loquacious Marxist to go on, as if he were hearing confession. Since then, Castro has been prodding Vatican diplomats to tell him what this pope is really like inside, what makes him the man he is. Next week he will find out. It's the confessor's turn to speak.
BY KENNETH L. WOODWARD With BROOK LARMER in Havana and ROD NORDLAND in Rome
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7351278/site/newsweek/page/2/
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7351278/site/newsweek/page/2/
 CUBAN COUNCIL OF STATE RESOLUTION(CubaNews translation by Ana Portela) Republic of Cuba Council of State Presidency
I, FIDEL CASTRO RUZ, President of the Council of State of the Republic of Cuba
LET IT BE KNOWN: That the Council of State of the Republic of Cuba, in use of the its attributions has agreed to decree the following DECREE
INASMUCH AS: We have learned of the demise of KAROL JOSEF WOJTYLA, HIS HOLINESS POPE JOHN PAUL II, the evening of Saturday, 2 April 2004, Rome time, officially announced by the Vatican.
INASMUCH AS: Cuba and the Holy See maintain uninterrupted diplomatic relations since 1935, based on the principle of mutual respect.
INASMUCH AS: Pope John Paul II is a world acclaimed personality in his more than 26 years in the Papacy, has been a tireless fighter in favor of peace, was well known for his activity in favor of a solution of many social evils affecting Humanity, criticized neoliberalism and was against war.
INASMUCH AS: His Holiness made a historical pastoral visit to our country from January 21 to 26, 1998 in which he was received by our people and government with respect and affection and condemned “the restrictive economic measures imposed from abroad as unjust and ethically unacceptable”, words he repeated on several occasions.
ACCORDINGLY: The Council of State of the Republic of Cuba
RESOLVES
FIRST: Decree three days of Official Mounting on the death of Pope John Paul II.
SECOND: Order that the National Flag fly at half mast in the public buildings and military institutions on the days three, four and five of April, 2005.
THIRD: The Ministers of Foreign Relations and Revolutionary Armed Forces are in charge of seeing to the compliance of this decree.
GIVEN in the Revolution Palace, city of Havana on the 2 day of the month of April, 2005, “Year of the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas”.
President of the Council of State
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Pope John Paul II's Biography
Rome, Apr 4 (Prensa Latina) Pope Jonh Paul II was born as Karol Jozef Wojtyla in May 18, 1920, in the small town of Wadowice, south of Krakow.
Friends in Wadowice, a town of 8,000 Catholics and 2,000 Jews 35 miles southwest of Krakow, called Wojtyla "Lolek". He was the second son of Karol Wojtyla, Sr., a retired army officer and tailor, and Emilia Kaczorowska Wojtyla, a schoolteacher of Lithuanian descent.
The Wojtylas were strict Catholics, but did not share the anti-Semitic views of many Poles. One of Lolek´s playmates was Jerzy Kluger, a Jew who many years later would play a key role as a go-between for John Paul II and Israeli officials when the Vatican extended long-overdue diplomatic recognition to Israel.
He lost his mother, Emilia, at age nine. Her death was an event that stayed with him, and acquaintances say it prompted his lifelong spiritual devotion to the Virgin Mary. One of his first youthful poems, "Over This, Your White Grave," was dedicated to his mother"s memory.
Three years later his only brother, Edmund, a physician, died of scarlet fever. And at age twenty he lost his father, a military officer who had raised his son with love and firmness.
These sorrows of early family life, along with the hard times that Poland experienced both prior to World War II and throughout it, were bound to give an intelligent young man cause for sober reflection. In 1939, under the Nazi occupation, he enrolled at Jagiellonian University in Krakow, and shortly thereafter he began secret studies for the priesthood. Publicly, however, he worked as a laborer in a quarry and a chemical factory.
In 1942, aware of his call to the priesthood, he began courses in the clandestine seminary of Krakow, run by Cardinal Adam Stefan Sapieha, archbishop of Krakow. At the same time, Karol Wojtyla was one of the pioneers of the "Rhapsodic Theatre," also clandestine.
Wojtyla"s passions in those early years were poetry, religion and the theater. After graduating from secondary school in 1938, he and his father moved to Krakow where he enrolled at Jagiellonian University to study literature and philosophy.
He also joined an experimental theater group and participated in poetry readings and literary discussion groups. Friends say he was an intense and gifted actor, and a fine singer.
After World War II, he continued his studies in the major seminary of Krakow, once it had re-opened, and in the faculty of theology of the Jagiellonian University, until his priestly ordination in Krakow on November 1, 1946. Soon after, Cardinal Sapieha sent him to Rome where he worked under the guidance of the French Dominican, Garrigou-Lagrange, spending much of the next few years studying -- he earned two masters degrees and a doctorate.
He finished his doctorate in theology in 1948, with a thesis on the topic of faith in the works of St. John of the Cross. At that time, during his vacations, he exercised his pastoral ministry among the Polish immigrants of France, Belgium and Holland, until he took up priestly duties as an assistant pastor in Krakow, in 1949.
In the early years of his priesthood, Wojtyla served as a chaplain to university students at St. Florian"s Church in Krakow. The church was conveniently located next to Jagiellonian University, where he was working on a second doctorate in philosophy.
When the university"s theology department was abolished in 1954, by the government, the entire faculty reconstituted itself at the Seminary of Krakow and Wojtyla continued his studies there.
He was also hired that same year by the Catholic University of Lublin -- the only Catholic university in the communist world -- as a non-tenured professor. The arrangement turned Wojtyla into a commuter, shuttling between Lublin and Krakow on the overnight train to teach and counsel in one city and study in the other.
He also founded and ran a service that dealt with marital problems, from family planning and illegitimacy to alcoholism and physical abuse. Time magazine called it "perhaps the most successful marriage institute in Christianity."
In 1956, Wojtyla was appointed to the Chair of Ethics at Catholic University and his ascent through the church hierarchy got a boost in 1958 when he was named the auxiliary bishop of Krakow.
When the Vatican Council II began the deliberations in 1962 that would revolutionize the church, Wojtyla was one of its intellectual leaders and took special interest in religious freedom. The same year, he was named the acting archbishop of Krakow when the incumbent died.
In spite of all his activities, Wojtyla did not slight his scholarly duties.
He wrote a treatise in 1960 called "Love and Responsibility" that laid out the foundation for what Weigel calls "a modern Catholic sexual ethic."
In 1969, the Polish Theological Society published Wojtyla´s "The Acting Person," a dense philosophical tract on phenomenology that Wojtyla discussed during a U.S. visit in 1978.
In 1977, Wojtyla gave a talk at a university in Milan called "The Problem of Creating Culture through Human Praxis."
Although he had established himself as a formidable intellectual presence -- as well as an able administrator and fund-raiser -- few suspected that the Sacred College of Cardinals would choose Wojtyla as the next pope after the death of John Paul I in September of 1978.
But when the cardinals were unable to agree on a candidate after seven rounds of balloting, Wojtyla was chosen on the eighth round late in the afternoon of October 16.
Wojtyla chose the same name as his predecessor -- whose reign lasted just 34 days before he died of a heart attack -- and added another Roman numeral in becoming the first Slavic pope. He was also the first non-Italian pope in 455 years (the last was Adrian VI in 1523) and, at 58, the youngest pope in 132 years.
He is not only the most traveled pope in history -- he speaks eight languages, learning Spanish after he became the pope -- he also has been quick to use the media and technology to his advantage.
In the early years of his papacy, he steered the Vatican into satellite transmissions and producing video cassettes. While other popes stayed close to Rome, remote and seemingly unapproachable, John Paul´s wide-ranging appearances -- enhanced by an actor´s sense of theater -- became worldwide news events.
When a Turk named Mehmet Ali Agca shot the pope twice in an assassination attempt in 1981, Agca first told the authorities that he was acting for the Bulgarian intelligence service, but he later recanted that part of his confession.
It did not matter to the pope who was responsible, and later he visited Agca in his cell and forgave him.
During his first triumphal visit to the United States, he warned his hosts about the dangers of materialism, selfishness and secularism, and suggested lowering the standard of living and sharing the wealth with the Third World.
The message did not play well, and still does not. But that has not stopped the pope from insisting that materialism is not the answer.
The Catholic church John Paul II inherited in 1978 was in shambles. Reforms begun by the Vatican Council II shook the church to its foundation, and the tumult within the church could be compared to the turmoil in the outer world during the 1960s" era of peace, love and protests over the war in Vietnam.
It is said the church was through a serious crisis when it lost one-third of its priests and a great number of nuns.
John Paul II embarked on nothing less than a restoration of the church, one grounded in its conservative tradition.
Although the church has expanded in Africa and Latin America -- the latter accounts for about half of the estimated one billion Catholics -- it has lost followers in the industrialized world, including Poland.
His inflexibility on issues with international ramifications -- birth control in Africa, for example -- has drawn strong criticism.
However, it is doubtful there has ever been a pope who has so successfully translated his strength, determination and faith into such widespread respect and goodwill. In a world of shifting trends and leaders of questionable virtue, John Paul II has been a towering figure at the moral center of modern life, analysts agree.
mh/lnThe Legacy of Pope John Paul II
Washington, Apr 6 (Prensa Latina) Respected and criticized, John Paul's 26-year leadership of the Roman Catholic Church was the third longest in history and he was the first non-Italian pope in over 400 years. During his papacy, he visited a record 120 nations and was seen in person by millions.
His death now brought the progressive radio program Democracy Now!, broadcast Tuesday conducted by Amy Goodman, to deal on the legacy of Karol Joseph Wojtyla as Pope of the Roman Catholic Church.
With the participation of Angela Bonavoglia, award-winning journalist who covers social, health, religious and women´s issues, Mary Segers, a professor of political science at Rutgers University and expert on American Catholicism and the relationship between religion and politics in the United States and Blase Bonpane, director of the Office of the Americas, who was a Catholic priest in Guatemala during the 1960´s, where he was expelled for his efforts on behalf of the poor and disenfranchised contributed their testimony to this program.
The Church, said Mary Segers, may have been in disarray when he became Pope and through force of his personality and travels, he's made many people who are not Catholic aware of his view of the message of Jesus Christ.
So what I sensed yesterday -- the churches were full here in the United States -- Catholics themselves finally got a renewed sense of the appreciation of this religious tradition. Too many times in the past the Catholic Church has been kind of dismissed or trivialized, at least in popular culture as a church that has sort of warped views on sexuality. Well, there's a lot more obviously, and I think John Paul II illustrated that.
On what can be expected in the future and who could succeed this Pope, professor Segers recalled the College of Cardinals today is very different from what it was in 1978. There are many more bishops now from Latin America and Africa and Asia. There are even fewer Italian cardinals proportionately. And so it's quite possible that we could have another non-Italian cardinal.
I think that you could see a possible candidate emerging from the Brazilian bishops or some of the other Latin American countries. There's a whole series of names put forward, of course, and there are Europeans, the Archbishop of Vienna Christoph Schoenborn, Godfried Daneels who is the Archbishop of Brussels, and Walter Kasper, who is a German cardinal, said Mary Segers, who added it is doubtful that any cardinal from the US be named at the moment.
I think because America is the superpower that it is, and it probably would be looked at in a global sense as kind of, well, why did you choose an American, they already govern the world in a sense, and why do you want them also to hold the highest position in the Catholic Church, concluded Segers.
About the stand of John Paul II concerning women, Angela Bonavoglia said it is a mixed legacy, because although he was definitely outspoken on discrimination against women and appointed them to high posts inside the Church for the first time, as two women to the Vatican Theological Commission and another as head of a pontifical academy, he basically saw women as nurturing, with qualities of humility, listening, waiting, so it was a notion of women in a passive kind of a capacity.
John Paul II was also opposed to women priests. He was a deeply-committed traditionalist, said Bonavoglia. In fact, the Vatican's own scriptural commission back in the 1970s studied the Bible to look for an absolute bar against women priests and concluded that it didn't exist in the Bible.
The issue on abortion is a much harder one. Historically, the Catholic Church's position has shifted. It was always a sin. It wasn't always murder. The groups like Catholics for Free Choice and a lot of Catholic women ethicists talk about 'primary of conscience' as being the basis for a woman's making what is a very difficult decision, and that this can be done in good conscience.
And I think the rigidity of [the Church's] position on abortion has to be looked at and contrasted in a way to its failure to take such a rigid position on anything else, on any of the other life issues. The Church is against capital punishment. It is against war except under very specific circumstances, recalled Bonavoglia.
But it has never said anybody who supports those things cannot come to communion, must be turned away at the altar, but it has taken that position with abortion. And on a purely political level, I think we have to ask why. It's a very patriarchal position and argument, as it has also been lacking concerning sex abuse by priests.
Blase Bonpane, on his part, said the low point of the Pope as head of the Church was his response to the death of Archbishop Romero and that was a result of very poor advice from Cardinal Casariego of Guatemala, who was the only cardinal in Central America at the time and a great supporter of the Guatemalan military and of militarism in general.
Another very serious error occurred when in March of 1983 he shook his finger at Ernesto Cardinal at a time when he was visiting Nicaragua and 20 youths had just been killed in the Contra war, and the mothers of those youth were present and they were holding pictures of their sons, and the pope actually told them to shut up.
He said, "silencio," and then he shook his finger at Ernesto, and I think he misunderstood completely what was taking place in Central America at the time. So that's a sorry part of the situation, said Bonpane.
The opposition to war of John Paul was absolutely outstanding, he explained, and I think it is quite tragic that the bishops of the United States did not pick up the cudgel after he made it clear his great opposition to war and to war in Iraq.
The US bishops took a very weak response, I believe, by not bringing that issue to each and every parish in the United States, almost giving one the feeling that they had a greater dedication to US foreign policy than they did to their own church.
This, I think, is quite scandalous, and it's been a history of scandal. The pro-war position of the leaders of the U.S. Church, like the famous Cardinal Spellman in the matter of Vietnam. So his position on war was excellent.
The pope´s stand on capitalism, said Blase Bonpane, is extremely interesting.
When it came time for the first conference that he attended in Puebla in Mexico -- I was there, and Archbishop Romero was present -- this was 1979. The condemnation at Puebla was of unrestrained capital.
He was very much against the deregulation. He was very much against what is called neoliberalism today, the 19th century laissez-faire capitalism that showed only regard for profit and no regard for the common good. So to the surprise of everyone at that conference, the only thing condemned in the conference was unrestrained capital, and Marxist analysis was kept as a methodology that was fully acceptable.
He was not talking about people becoming Marxist, as such, but the use of Marxist analysis, that is, to recognize class warfare, to recognize the lack of distributive justice in society, was completely acceptable. So these things were on the positive side.
And it was curious that prior to the conference in Puebla, the newspapers were coming out saying Pope John Paul II condemns liberation theology. It just didn't happen. It was that the capitalist world was so afraid of what liberation theology implied that they wanted to condemn it in the press before the Pope even made a statement on it.
So that part was of great interest to all of us, and liberation theology is simply a response to imperial theology, which has been with us since 312 A.D., since the time of Constantine, the emperor becoming a Christian.
He brought the sword into Christianity and conversion by way of the sword, and that was ultimately seen in the Crusades, in the Inquisition, in the conquistadores. And these are all things for which Pope John Paul II apologized. He was horrified by Church history, and that included the Holocaust.
I don't know of any pope that had apologized for the history of the Church prior to him. So he was an extremely complex man. And there are many, many facets to this person, some that we're sorry about and many that we find quite unusual.
Contradictory situations discussed at the program were John Paul´s position regarding Rev. Leonardo Boff of Brazil, a movement leader, silenced by Rome for a year. In 1992 he resigned from the priesthood to protest Vatican restrictions on writings by the clergy and members of religious orders.
Another champion of liberation theology, the Rev. Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the first democratically-elected president of Haiti denounced the Vatican in 1992 for recognizing military leaders who had deposed him in 1991. Since 1982 when he became a priest, Father Aristide had excoriated the Haitian Church for what he called its "complicity with brutal dictatorships."
The Vatican was opposed to others in the clergy that went into politics: Miguel D'Escoto, Ernesto Cardinal, and others. I think this was a grave error, said Bonpane.
These men were in a position of representing the people, the hopes, desires and anxieties. They were fulfilling what Vatican II said we should be doing, and I think Vatican II, that is between 1962 and 1965, was a great threat to Pope John Paul II.
He felt that the matter of hierarchy was being destroyed and that the base communities were being given too much power, so he reacted to the Vatican II, which had really ignited a fire in all of us, because we were told not to wait for orders from Rome. We were told to enter into these hopes, desires and anxieties to the ultimate consequences.
That led Jean-Bertrand Aristide into saying, "Alright, I'll be president, if necessary." It led Ernesto Cardinal to say, "Alright, I'll be minister of culture." It led Miguel D'Escoto to say "Alright, I'll be foreign minister."
We have got to work on behalf of these people, who are suffering, who are hungry, who are in misery, and they need to be liberated. So I think this is another example of many of the sins of the Church, said Bonpane.
The man behind this -- as you know, the Pope was traveling to 120 countries -- but the man responsible for enforcement was the Cardinal Ratzinger who is an extreme reactionary and who removed the license to teach from many priests, and some of them had to go forward on their own because they could not simply sit in silence and watch the faithful deteriorate spiritually and materially.
In the opinion of Bonpane, these changes are to continue, and what is called liberation theology will simply be called theology. I think it's a matter of removing the imperial trappings that had nothing to do with the teaching of Jesus, imperial trappings that have come into the church as a result of the Roman imperial power. And we'll see something much more pure, much more primitive, much less sectarian.
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Messages exchanged between
Pope John Paul II and Fidel Castro
Pope John Paul II and Fidel Castro
For Pope John Paul II
Your Holiness:
I wish to send you my warmest greetings and express my gratitude for your friendly words given to me by Mother Tekla and your beautiful gift.
I was very pleased to see how you have recovered your health and with so much energy while keeping your spirit of work and struggle alive.
Our disturbed and tormented world needs, more than ever, your work towards peace, justice and solidarity among the human beings and the peoples.
I increasingly admire your forbearance and iron will in the performance of your noble and humanitarian task.
I wish you long health to allow you to preach in favor of the poor and the destitute of humanity. You will be accompanied by a growing number of persons who have the same sentiments and hopes.
Receive my congratulations for the magnificent group of excellent persons of the Catholic Church that I have had the privilege to meet after your appreciated visit to our country and I beg you excuse these short and informal words before bidding farewell to Mother Tekla and those who accompany her.
She will tell you of the intense efforts made for the forthcoming inauguration of the Order of Saint Brigid in Cuba. It will be an excellent step in the development of our relations that your visit to Cuba gave an unforgettable and strong impulse.
I hope that in the midst of your tireless battling I will have the opportunity of greeting you again.
I wish you success in your fight for peace and the globalization of solidarity. The every day events demonstrate the urgency to achieve these imperative objectives.
Fidel Castro Ruz
Nov. 10, 2002
To Dr. Fidel Castro Ruz
President of the Council of State and the Government of the Republic of Cuba.
Mister Presidente:
I have received your kind letter of the tenth of this month and thank you very much for the sentiments that you have shown to my person and my pastoral ministry in the Church and with the talks with men and women of good will.
I was very pleased by your spontaneous and warm words that express your satisfaction for having met so many people of the Catholic Church after the intense days of my pastoral visit to Cuba in 1998 that I remember so vividly and that permitted me, also, to know the Cubans better, receive your hospitality and witness their rich values leaving them with an evangelical message of hope.
I am aware of the details regarding the founding of the Order of the Holy Savior and Saint Brigid in Cuba. You will recall, other religious Institutes and congregations, men and women, also want to serve the noble Cuban people through the teachings of the Gospel and we hope the moment for this to come to be is not far off, counting on your understanding and the benevolence of Your Excellency.
I ask God to bless that beloved people, so rich in culture and traditions and with such a deep Christian plurality so that they always walk along the path of real freedom, of material and spiritual progress, of solidarity and justice, to enjoy well being according to their inalienable dignity.
I take this opportunity to renew, Mister Presidents, the feeling of my highest and distinguished esteem.
Vatican, November 22. 2002.
(signed) Joannes Paulus II
To Your Excellency, Mr. Fidel Castro Ruz
President of the Council of State and Government of the Republic of Cuba.
On the occasion last month of January of the V anniversary of my unforgettable visit to Cuba that marked me deeply and remembering the emotion of those intense days that allowed me to know the people closely, I send Your Excellency, by the hand of the Cardinal Crescencio Sepe, Prefect of the Congregation for Evangelization of the Peoples, my warm and cordial greeting and I renew my vows of affection and closeness to all Cubans.
I received many attentions from Your Excellency, other officials and so many Cubans that, once again, I want to renew my gratitude and pray to God so for that Nation to always follow the true paths of reconciliation and peace, spiritual and material development, justice, freedom and solidarity working towards a common goal that is the true welfare of the Nation and its inhabitants.
In the meantime I call for all Cubans, through prayers to the Virgen de la Caridad de El Cobre, loving Mother of that noble people, to receive many divine blessings to help them in their lives and I express to you, Mister President, my highest and distinguished esteem.
Vatican, March 1, 2003
(signed) Joannes Paulus II
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