In Cuba, Francis steers clear of Castro’s ‘ideas’

When I read the greetings Raul Castro offered Pope Francis at his arrival in Cuba this weekend – in which the Cuban president identified the pope’s moral concerns with the communist ideology of the Cuban Revolution – it took me back almost 20 years.

I was in Havana for the first papal visit in history when St. John Paul II came to the island in January 1998.  While there I noticed that a number of the programs for the papal Masses were printed in Mexico.  When I asked an official of the Cuban Catholic church why they did that, I was told that the church in Cuba had limited access to printing presses.  After some more probing, I learned that the church needed a particular kind of printing press but could not afford the $20,000 price tag.

{mosads}Back home later, I mentioned this conversation to some friends.  One of them asked, “Can you guarantee you can get the money to them.”  “I think so,” I said.  “Then you have the money,” he answered. And so my second visit to Cuba in December 1998 was scheduled.

On my return to the island, I was invited to stay at the residence of a high-ranking churchman and had dinner with him the evening of my arrival.  He seemed curiously uninterested in talking about the money I brought with me for the printing press. After enjoying an agreeable dinner he asked how I liked his country. I told him I admired his people’s resiliency, their food, (of course) their cigars, but I related a sad encounter.  When I was exiting my hotel one evening I was stopped by a woman who was offering her “services.”  When I engaged her in conversation she told me she was actually a medical doctor from one of Cuba’s major cities. She pointed to another woman nearby, a friend. “She’s a lawyer,” I was told.  “We are only paid about $12 a month, so in this week I can make enough to support my family for a year.”

The churchman’s reaction to the story befuddled me. “Isn’t it wonderful that in our country people like that can become doctors and lawyers,” he said.

What a convoluted way of thinking, I thought to myself. I did not consider him insincere; perhaps he was just saying this because he feared his apartment was bugged by the secret police. It was a strange way of thinking: to see reality staring you in the face and choosing to see something else.

This is what I thought of when I read the highly politicized greetings Raul Castro offered Pope Francis this weekend.

Quoting the pope frequently, albeit selectively, Castro transformed the Holy Father’s call “for man’s dignity and his right to the land and to work; and for a roof to give him shelter,” into an endorsement of his regime when he asserted that “It was to conquer such rights, among others, that the Cuban Revolution was undertaken. Those were the same rights that Fidel advocated…” then claiming, with a straight face, to “have founded an equitable society with social justice and extensive access to culture…”

Castro may want to explain these rights to the two dissidents who were forcibly restrained on Sunday from entering the Cathedral to meet the pope —  at his own invitation.  Or to the hundreds of political prisoners in Cuba who languish even now in jails while the pope was on their island.      

I have long been in favor of dropping all trade barriers with Cuba.  I have always thought it best to force the regime to deal with us on the basis of free economic exchange.  The embargo is a policy that was born in cynicism and has only given the Castro regime something to hide behind while blaming others for the manifest failure of Cuban socialism. I trust the pope knows this and that he helps the beleaguered island state to inch toward freedom.

The pope’s message that, “Service is never ideological, for we do not serve ideas, we serve people,” has great application in Cuba.  Let us hope that now that he moves on to the U.S. politicians who will be open to dropping their political blinders. May they see Francis’ call for what it really is: a call to respect human dignity at all stages of life, with the context of human freedom and in the midst of economic prosperity.

Sirico, a Roman Catholic priest, is president and co-founder of the Acton Institute in Grand Rapids, Michigan (acton.org)