Hope from the Pope
Pope Benedict looked forward Friday to seeing communism in Cuba consigned to the ash heap of history. His remarks, delivered en route to Mexico and then to Castro’s island redoubt, were well timed and well put. “Today it is evident that Marxist ideology in the way it was conceived no longer corresponds to reality,” the pontiff said on the airplane from Rome, adding: “In this way we can no longer respond and build a society. New models must be found with patience and in a constructive way.”
Benedict’s remarks were the most pointed criticism of the Cuban regime ever delivered by a Pope, and they came as the pontiff faced calls to show solidarity with dissidents who have been fighting for greater freedoms.
While he is not scheduled to meet with regime opponents during his stop on the island nextweek, he said in answer to a question that “it’s obvious that the church is always on the side of freedom, freedom of conscience, freedom of religion.”
The Vatican and the Castros — first Fidel and now his successor brother, Raul — have been coexisting uneasily as the government has afforded Cubans greater ability to practice their faiths and the church has worried about the “trauma,” as Benedict put it, of revolutionary change.
Words and symbolic acts are all the Pope can wield against Cuban repression. He has done so effectively thus far and can be of enormous service on human rights abuses behind closed doors.
His predecessor, John Paul II, secured the freedom of political prisoners. Benedict may well be able to achieve similar ends, including, it is hoped, the release of American Alangross.
The regime slammed Gross, a subcontractor working on a U.S. Agency for International Development program, with a 15-year sentence for distributing communications equipment to Jewish groups. In Cuba, this is a “subversive,” therefore illegal, activity.
The pope clearly knows who he is dealing with. Cuba is run by men who see free thinking and free enterprise writ large as assaults on their authority.
An independent press? Illegal. Protests? Banned. The unauthorized assembly of more than three people, even for religious services in private homes, is punishable by up to three months in prison. Academic freedom? Nil. Property? Not really yours. Democratic elections? Ha ha. The internet? Locked down.
In 2011, human rights groups documented more than 4,000 arbitrary detentions. Last weekend, some 70 of the Ladies in White — a movement made up of wives and other relatives of jailed dissidents who protest by silently walking through Cuba’s streets each Sunday after Mass — were apprehended, then released.
Themessage— cause no trouble when the pope is here— was that of leaders who are nervous about their own people, as well as frightened by the trouble the pontiff can happily bring their way.