Pope Calls for ‘Tenderness’ Revolution in Cuba

VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis, in an intense, three-day apostolic voyage to Cuba, offered messages of hope to the Church and Cuban society, in the face of continued difficulties and human-rights violations in the communist country.

Coming less than a year after the Holy See-brokered détente between the United States and Cuba, this was a diplomatically delicate trip, but also one the Holy Father wanted to hold up as “an example of reconciliation” at a time when the world is suffering from what he called a “piecemeal third-world war.”

The Pope spoke frequently during the visit, which concluded Sept. 22, of the importance of authentic service, encounter and accompaniment, the value of poverty and detachment from riches.

“They were three intense days that I would say fully met the expectations of the people and of the Church in Cuba,” said Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi. “The Pope has certainly given a great message of hope, despite the difficulties.”

Father Lombardi added that the Pope’s “great moral authority” and Francis’ encouragement in achieving restoration of U.S.-Cuba ties helps in the “search for, and the possibility of, change in the Cuban situation.”

But the Holy Father faced criticism for being too lenient on the injustices of the regime, in contrast to more forceful and direct condemnations from Popes St. John Paul II and Benedict XVI.

In particular, political dissidents, many of whom continue to suffer from human-rights violations, wanted Francis to speak out more against arrests of opponents of the regime before and during the visit. Although he telephoned some dissidents on Sept. 20 to give a “passing greeting,” they were disappointed that he held no meeting with them but chose to spend half an hour with Cuba’s former revolutionary dictator, Fidel Castro.

 

Two Anniversaries

The Holy Father began his visit at a welcome ceremony at Havana airport by underlining two important anniversaries this year for the island-nation: the centenary since Pope Benedict XV declared Our Lady of Charity of El Cobre as patroness of Cuba and 80 years since the Holy See established diplomatic ties with Cuba.

He spoke of the Church’s vital role in bringing freedom to the country and the importance of the Blessed Virgin’s intercession to help Cuba “travel the paths of justice, peace, liberty and reconciliation.”

But he also made a veiled criticism of the regime, saying the restoration of U.S.-Cuba ties is a sign of the victory of the “system of universal growth” over “the forever-dead system of groups and dynasties.”

At Mass the following day, in Havana’s Plaza de la Revolución, the Pope said that Jesus “sets before us the ‘logic’ of love,” calling for concrete commitment and service to neighbor, especially the most vulnerable. It’s a call, he added, that upsets the logic of those who seek privilege and the “highest place.”

In a further criticism of the regime, he stressed that service to others should not be “self-serving,” which helps only “my people, our people,” but one which places “our brothers and sisters at the center.” Service, he added, “is never ideological; for we do not serve ideas, we serve people.”

In his Angelus address that followed, the Pope spoke again against ideology and of his hope for a lasting peace in Colombia and a “definitive reconciliation” after years of bloodshed.

 

Fidel Castro

In the afternoon, the Pope visited Fidel Castro in his home. The half-hour meeting with the Jesuit-educated former dictator reportedly took place on the Pope’s initiative. Upon arrival in Havana, the Pope asked President Raul Castro to convey his “sentiments of particular respect and consideration” to his brother Fidel. Father Lombardi called the meeting “familiar and informal,” during which the Pope gave him several CDs, copies of his two encyclicals, Lumen Fidei (The Light of Faith) and Laudato Si (The Care for Our Common Home), and books by an Italian priest and a Spanish Jesuit.

Francis later said he did not talk about the past with the 89-year-old Castro, except to share recollections of a Jesuit education and how the priests “made him work.” Castro, he added, was very interested in Laudato Si.

The Pope’s next engagement was vespers at Havana’s cathedral in the presence of priests, religious and seminarians. The Holy Father spoke extemporaneously of the importance of poverty and remaining unattached to goods. Poverty, he said, quoting St. Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Society of Jesus, is the “wall and the mother” of consecrated life: mother, because it “gives birth to greater confidence in God,” and wall because it protects from worldliness.

“Wealth impoverishes us, in a bad way,” he said. “It takes away the best that we have and strips us of the only wealth which is truly worthwhile, so that we put our security in something else.”

The Pope warned those present against complaining. “May God free us from whimpering nuns,” he said, stressing it’s a phrase used by St. Teresa of Avila to her nuns. But he thanked the many consecrated men and women who serve those society considers “useless,” the hungry, imprisoned and the sick. “There Jesus shines forth!” he said.

The Pope also reminded priests that they will find the “least and the littlest” in the confessional and urged confessors not to give penitents “a hard time,” but, rather, “think about your own sins; think that you could be that person.” Do not “cast him out of the confessional,” he said, but remember that “Jesus embraced them. Jesus loved them.”

Francis also made the distinction between unity and conformity, the latter of which “kills the life of the Spirit.” Unity, he said, is “threatened whenever we try to turn others into our own image and likeness.”

In further off-the-cuff comments to young people that evening, the Pope called on them to have the courage to “dream” and seek new horizons. He urged them not to be closed in “little convents of ideologies,” but to speak about what each person has in common. He warned against the throwaway culture that destroys hope and how young people “are thrown away because they are not given work.”

 

St. Matthew

After traveling to Holguin in southern Cuba the following day, the Pope recalled at Mass how St. Matthew’s encounter with Jesus and his loving mercy “transformed him.” He no longer viewed people “to be lived off, used and abused,” but meeting Jesus prompted him to “missionary activity, service, self-giving.”

He took up the theme further the next day, at the Shrine of Our Lady of Charity of El Cobre in Santiago, when he said God’s presence “never leaves us tranquil: It always pushes to do something” — as the life of the Blessed Virgin showed. “We are asked to live the revolution of tenderness as Mary, our Mother of Charity, did,” he said.  “We are invited to leave home and to open our eyes and hearts to others. Our revolution comes about through tenderness, through the joy which always becomes closeness and compassion and leads us to get involved in, and to serve, the lives of others.  

Like Mary, he said, “we want to be a Church which serves.” And like Mary, Mother of Charity, “we want to be a Church which goes forth to build bridges, to break down walls, to sow seeds of reconciliation.”

On leaving Cuba, Raul Castro gave Francis a warm farewell. It was noted that the Cuban leader, who once said Francis could bring him back to the Church, accompanied the Holy Father throughout the visit and attended all three papal Masses.

Reflecting on the visit, Father Robert Sirico, who heads the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty, told the Register that “any time a religious leader can visit Cuba is a good thing” and that each of the previous papal visits “have had their ameliorative effects” on the country (John Paul II visited Cuba in 1998, and Benedict XVI did in 2012). “I think his visit will help to embolden the movements to change Cuba,” he said.

But he felt the Pope’s unwillingness to speak out more on behalf of political prisoners or be more critical of the Castros and Marxism in general was a “missed opportunity.”

It brings to the surface “some lingering concerns about the sympathy Pope Francis seems to have with more left-leaning movements,” Father Sirico said. “I don’t think the Holy Father had to be in any way rude or impolitic, but to leave behind only one elliptical statement that could be construed as critical of Marxist ideology (on serving people, not ideas), is certainly a lost opportunity.”

Speaking in his own defense on the papal plane to Washington, the Holy Father stressed that he “never said a thing that wasn’t the social doctrine of the Church” and that to say he had given the impression of “being a little ‘to the left’” would be “an error of explanation.”

Asked about 50 dissidents stopped by police outside the nunciature to prevent them from meeting him, Francis said he didn’t have “any news” about that happening.

He stressed he likes to meet all people, as he considers them all “children of God,” but that he had refused all private audiences with individuals and groups, even a head of state.

“I’m on a visit to a nation, and just that,” the Pope said. “I hadn’t planned any audience with the dissidents or the others.”

He added he had expected to greet “with pleasure” some dissidents outside the cathedral before vespers, but “no one identified themselves in their greetings.”

Francis then referred to 3,500 prisoners on a list to be pardoned and how the Church in Cuba is “committed to this work.” But according to Ofelia Acevedo, widow of Cuban activist leader Oswaldo Payá, no date has been set for their release. She also said no political prisoners are among them.

“The Castro government uses people like currency trading,” she told the website Rossoporpora on Sept. 17. “Usually, when they release prisoners, they’re put on probation or they’re expelled from the country.”

Ángel Moya, a prominent Cuban pro-democracy activist, expressed disappointment that the Pope hadn’t been stronger in his comments. “John Paul spoke out clearly, but the current Pope is too soft, with regards to human rights,” he told the Guardian newspaper Sept. 20. “Cubans have a harsh life, but he has not been categorical enough when talking about civil liberties.”

Moya, who was imprisoned for eight years, said he would nevertheless continue campaigning. “We’ll defend our rights with or without the Pope. He is no liberator. It is up to Cubans to struggle for our liberty.”

Latin-American expert Jimmy Burns, author of a new biography on the Pope entitled Francis: Pope of Good Promise, agreed that Francis’ “softly-softly” approach contrasted with pronouncements from both John Paul and Benedict XVI, as well as Francis’ outspoken remarks “on other political issues like global warming, migration, poverty and capitalism.”

But he told the Register that this papal trip to Cuba took place “in a very different political context” than the previous ones. Francis, he said, was on his way to the U.S. after helping to re-establish U.S.-Cuba ties, resulting in “a delicate diplomatic balancing act, which arguably would be put at risk were Pope Francis to confront the Castro regime more openly.”

Furthermore, Burns thinks Francis’ service-is-never-ideological comment “was, in its context, willfully and characteristically bold.”

He also found it remarkable how Cuban state television explained “in great detail” the Mass to its viewers in a country where, not so long ago, the regime “tried to relegate religion to minor status after the revolution.”

Overall, Burns felt the visit had many “positive symbols and gestures, which cannot only help reinforce Catholicism in Latin America, but also contribute to global peace and harmony.”

On the Pope’s encounter with Fidel Castro, Burns said he was reminded of Castro’s prediction many years ago: that Cuba “would only reconcile itself with the U.S. when a black president was in the White House and a Latin-American was pope.”

“He might have added,” he said, “that having been educated by the Jesuits, it would take a Jesuit pope to finally bring Fidel back into the Catholic faith.”