How to Topple a Dictator

When John Paul II made his trips to Communist Poland, and granted its president a 1987 audience, detractors complained that he would legitimize and entrench the ruling regime. The Berlin Wall was torn down in 1989, and a revived Poland held a World Youth Day in 1991.

Early signs are that the Pope's visit to Cuba is shining the same harsh and healing light on the island's communist past.

In newspapers across the country and around the world, story after story focuses not just on the Pope's visit to Cuba-but on the tragic history of the country.

Donald Adderton wrote Jan. 10 in his Sydney Sun Herald Column that while, in America, Cuban ex-patriot “Orlando Hernandez sorts how he will spend his first million-dollar, major-league paycheck, millions of Cubans remain shackled in poverty in Fidel Castro's crumbling socialist economy….

“Nevertheless, Maria Vesa and her husband, Dr. Antonio Vesa, of Biloxi applauded Hernandez's feat, because each defection tosses Castro's treachery into the world spotlight.”

The Vesas had been married three years when “La Revolucion” came to power. They thought it might be good for the country. But the two ended up in prison, according to the article.

Mrs. Vesa is quoted saying, “If you go to church they will take privileges away from you… they will deny you an education and a future.

“It is not only the poverty… the young people have lost their dreams.”

She praised the Pope's visit, and a Mass he will hold on January 23 in her hometown.

“It is such a blessing that he is coming to Cuba… He is giving the Cuban people papal nourishment.”

Castro Spies Bug Pope

“A surveillance bug was found in a room Pope John Paul II will use during his historic trip to Cuba-and Catholic Church officials are worried it was planted by Fidel Castor's spies,” reported the New York Post [Jan. 11].

“The discovery threatened to derail the Pontiff's Jan. 21-25 visit to the Communist-ruled island, the Spanish newspaper El Pais reported yesterday.

“The Vatican's secretary of State protested to the government and threatened to reconsider the trip.

El Pais reported that the Cuban government claimed the microphone was left over from the 1950s, before the communists came to power.

The New York Post said that a Vatican source called the explanation “laughable.” Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls would not comment on the situation.

Experts said, in El Pais, that the bug was too new to have been installed so long ago, and speculated that the Cuban Secret Service must have planted it.

Laws Against ‘Mind Control’ Turned Against Church

“A network of psychiatric, legal, media, and socialist groups are pressuring European governments to outlaw or curtail the activities of well-known religious organizations, a new report states,” writes Larry Witham of the Washington Times in a story that appears in the December 14, 1997 weekly edition of the paper.

“With groups such as Catholic charismatics, Hasidic Jews, Baptists, Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, Quakers, Buddhists — and the YWCA — now being listed as ‘dangerous sects’ by state panels, American human rights groups are raising concerns.”

“Without being alarmist,” the paper quotes Massimo Introvigne, a Roman Catholic scholar in Turin, saying, “we think an international discussion should be started.” The movement is made up of “liberal rationalists,” he said, “They criticize the ‘rising tide of irrationality.’”

According to the article, Introvigne presented a paper in Washington, D.C. on the subject, in which he reports that Germany lists 800 groups on its list of dangerous sects. Belgium lists 187 and France lists 172. France's list includes Baptists. Other targeted groups include Opus Dei and Campus Crusade for Christ.

Catholic Bishops in France and Italy have criticized the lists and “alarm bells went off in Vatican circles,” the article quotes Introvigne saying.

Boy Destroys Controversial Photo of Crucifix

In what might be called a post-modern reverse-iconoclasm, a 16-year-old Catholic Australian destroyed a photograph in the Australian National Gallery of Victoria.

The boy “destroyed the controversial photograph … to vent his anger at [its] ‘deep and bitter attack on his religious beliefs,’” reported The Age, a Melbourne daily newspaper, Dec. 9.

“The Children's Court was told that the boy, then 16, decided to smash the photograph with a hammer after watching his mother cry when the Catholic Church failed in its supreme Court bid to ban the photograph's exhibition…” He was fined and allowed to return home on bond, according to the report.

“The police prosecutor, Sergeant Paul Snell, told the court that on 12 October the boy, armed with a hammer, went to the Andres Serrano exhibition…. A friend-who faces similar charges in the Melbourne Magistrates Court- allegedly distracted security guards by kicking a photo called The Klansman.

“The defendant took the hammer from his belt and hit the glass-framed print nine times. He then dropped the hammer and gave himself up.

“The photograph was insured for $88,809.95.

“In defense, Ms. Nancy Grewcock said her client's family were committed Catholics and the boy's mother had wept about the photograph's depiction of Jesus Christ bathed in urine.”

hoto called The Klansman.

itted Catholics and the boy's mother had wept about the photograph's depiction of Jesus Christ bathed in urine.”

hoto called The Klansman.