From our Bureau of Troublesome Priests
Father Alberto Reyes is at it again. The fearless priest has dared to speak freely about Castro, Inc.’s abusive nature and about the need for an end to its dictatorship.
Among his denunciations, the most troubling is the revelation that in addition to personal threats against individual priests, Castro, Inc. also tries to intimidate Cuba’s bishops into gagging their clergy.
Papa Che’s response to this abuse is to embrace and openly admire the leaders of Cuba’s dictatorship.
Abridged from Catholic News Agency
Father Alberto Reyes, a priest of the Archdiocese of Camagüey in Cuba, recently stated that members of the Church who denounce the injustices that occur in the country get calls and threats from the government.
Commenting on the report, Reyes told ACI Prensa that “the cause of the deterioration of religious freedom in Cuba” is the “totalitarian government” that rules the country and that by seeking absolute control, it also needs to “have the control over the Church: what is allowed, what is not allowed, according to their own interests.”
“If we also consider the prophetic mission of the Church as part of religious freedom,” Reyes noted, “there are continuous obstacles, because priests [and] men and women religious who have raised our voices have been harassed, publicly confronted by government partisans, and we have been summoned to State Security. A lot has happened lately.”
“We have been threatened with being prosecuted and being imprisoned if we continue to publish our opinion on the situation in the country in the media when it doesn’t agree with the official version of the government,” Reyes told ACI Prensa.
The priest of the Archdiocese of Camagüey explained that another mechanism used by communist officials is “to continually complain to the bishops and religious superiors so that they are the ones who take measures against us, so that they are the ones who silence us and then they [the officials] have clean hands.”
Regarding the role of Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel, Reyes said that he is only “the face, but he’s not the one who decides, he’s not the one who rules in Cuba,” simply “he is the bull’s eye at which all the displeasure this people has can be directed, but he doesn’t do anything by himself, he can’t.”
“He can’t do anything about religious freedom, because that’s something decided above him. The entire issue of control of the churches is handled by the Office of Religious Affairs directed by Caridad Diego, who for more than 30 years has controlled the activity of the Church with an iron hand and is the one that decides all this iron control that there is over the Church,” he explained.
“In that sense, Díaz-Canel simply follows orders, he’s not the one who decides,” Reyes pointed out.
Sometimes, when I’m feeling generous, I allow for the possibility that Bergoglio may simply overestimate his “diplomatic” skills, or that he may be too dense to realize who and what he’s dealing with in Cuba, that “great example” he admiringly spoke of. In other words, he may just be a fool of a particularly bad kind–the kind that thinks he’s far sharper, abler and more clever than he actually is. In any case, he’s…lamentable.