Dialogue is always so successful

Armando Valladares writes about the Church’s complicity in sustaining the castro regime:

Among the “fruits,” the high-ranking prelate appeared to include “mediation” with the regime led by the Archbishop of Havana, Cardinal Jaime Lucas Ortega y Alamino, who has a well-known track record as a collaborator of the regime. In fact, the only “fruits” the cardinal seems to have garnered do not go beyond the mere transfer of a dozen sick political prisoners. These were being tortured in prisons far from their homes but are now being tortured near their homes. He also obtained parole (which is not the same as unconditional release) for Ariel Sigler, a regime opponent who was a famous athlete and is now confined to a wheelchair because of privations and torture. Actually, by releasing him, the regime avoids the risk of having such a well-known political prisoner die in jail and become a martyr.

With his trip, statements and silence, Archbishop Dominique François Joseph Mamberti continued the mysterious, enigmatic and baffling collaborationist ritual of high-ranking Vatican officials who have traveled to the island prison over the last decades. These range from the infamous Nuncio, Archbishop Cesare Zacchi, who praised the alleged “Christian virtues” of dictator Fidel Castro, to the steps of his predecessor as Secretary for Relations with States, Archbishop Agostino Casaroli, who in 1974 said that Cuban Catholics were “happy,” all the way to the present Secretary of State, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, a strong proponent of “dialogue” with the regime. In this regard, I have often found myself in the painful need of writing articles which are always well-documented yet never contested.

In fact, we are now witnessing more than “mediation.” This is literally a “rescue” of the Cuban regime on both foreign and domestic levels, driven by the island’s bishops and by Vatican diplomacy. On the foreign level, the European Union is allowing itself to be impressed and stunned by this ecclesiastical “rescue” operation and has thus postponed until September a possible hardening of its stance toward the Cuban dictatorship. Domestically, this “rescue” will demoralize the faithful Catholics of the island and those Cubans who heroically oppose their shepherds’ collaboration with the communist wolves.