It is one of those things that just make you scratch your head: The Vatican continues its refusal to commit to a meeting with Cuban dissidents due to the Pope’s incredibly busy schedule and time constraints. However, the very busy Vatican, which cannot seem to find the time to meet with the Ladies in White who are attacked and repressed every week when they try to attend mass, does have time to bid an official farewell to the pet crocodile given to the pope as a gift by the Castro dictatorship.
‘Pope’s crocodile’ gets papal send-off to Cuba
ROME—Pope Benedict XVI only knew him for a short time, but the brief encounter was enough to earn a special papal farewell as the esteemed guest prepared to return home — to a swamp in Cuba.
Which would be odd, if the guest in question weren’t a baby crocodile that had a special audience with the pope in January.
A top Vatican cleric presided over a ceremony in Rome’s zoo Wednesday to bid farewell to the baby crocodile, dubbed Il Coccodrillo del Papa (“The Pope’s Crocodile”).
The reptile is being returned to its natural habitat in Cuba later this month —a journey coinciding with the pontiff’s own visit to the island nation scheduled for March 26.
The initiative symbolizes “respect for nature and friendship between nations,” Vatican Substitute for General Affairs Archbishop Giovanni Angelo Becciu said during the ceremony, which was also attended by Cuba’s ambassador to the Holy See, Eduardo Delgado.
Before taking up his current post of Vatican chief of staff, Becciu served as the Vatican’s ambassador to Havana.
Manda timbales…
Do they have time to meet the kids?
In all honesty, as of me, the Catholic Church can go to hell. By now I’ve lost all my respect for these clowns. That said, I am kind of glad Castro still thinks these people are relevant enough as to be used for propaganda, because they are not.
The way I see it, it should have been a baby shark plucked from the Florida Strait. If you’re going to do animal symbolism lets go with the truth, and those sharks, fattened on Cuban flesh are in my mind representative of the Castros. Everything they have, everything they sell and leech from, belongs to someone else. Sharks and Castros both scavengers, one to be respected, and the other deserving of hell.
It is appropriate that there is a croc to go with the snake of a pope. The whore of Babylon is living up to his Biblically prophetic description.
So, ridiculous fuss and ceremony are lavished on some lame reptile, but actual suffering humans (Catholics, even) clamoring for the pope’s attention get the run-around and may wind up effectively ignored. So some lousy lizard gets more attention, pampering and petting than a brave but defenseless and persecuted woman like Lady in White Berta Soler (who happens to be black). Either the Vatican is really clueless as to how appallingly bad this looks, or it’s simply doing “diplomacy as usual” as if it doesn’t matter how bad it looks to ordinary Cubans, since said diplomacy is not about Cubans but about Vatican-Castro, Inc. relations. Based on past experience, one has to conclude it’s the latter.
However, Castro, Inc. is not, never was and never will be part of the RCC’s congregation or constituency–it’s simply using the RCC, blatantly, and the RCC is playing along. Again, what are ordinary Cubans, who ARE the RCC’s congregation, supposed to think, not just now, but in future? Unless Benedict has something up his sleeve that surprises and mollifies everyone during the visit (and I don’t mean getting Alan Gross released), this entire business is likely to leave a VERY bad taste in the mouths of Cubans on and off the island, and it’s not as if what they’ve been tasting is especially palatable.