Catholic priest Father Alberto Reyes continues to speak truth to power in communist Cuba, no doubt leaving the Castro dictatorship wondering “will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?”
Via CiberCuba (my translation):
Father Alberto Reyes to the government: ‘What more do you need to realize Cuba has become a nightmare?’
Cuban priest Alberto Reyes, from the diocese of Camagüey, shared a reflection on social media in which he criticizes the government for not acknowledging that they have turned the country into a nightmare.
Fr. Reyes, a strong critic of the regime, shared a note on Facebook denouncing the crisis afflicting the people and painfully pointing out how the vast majority of young people only think about emigrating.
As he has done on other occasions, Reyes urged leaders to understand the will of their own people and recognize that the current system doesn’t work, and that it will only bring more suffering and misery.
Below, CiberCuba shares the full text of the post.
I’ve been thinking… (XLIII)
I’ve been thinking about the humility of King David.
King David is the model of a great leader: capable, competent, visionary. But we already know that he didn’t do everything right. He seduced a married woman, while he had many other wives, and when she became pregnant, to cover up his sin, he had her husband murdered and kept her.
However, when the prophet Nathan confronted him with what he had done, David, the all-powerful monarch, lowered his head, allowed himself to be confronted, and humbly said, ‘I have sinned against the Lord.’
A couple of weeks ago, I started catechesis in my parish. One of the activities that day was to ask the children to freely make a group drawing. The children didn’t paint God, or Jesus Christ, or the Virgin, or their families, or toys, or children playing… they painted airplanes.
Last weekend, I gathered the teenagers from the parish for a meeting. The theme revolved around necessary values in life. One of the activities was this: ‘You are going to start a family and you have to create your family crest, in which you will engrave the values you want to pass down to your family, the foundations on which you will build your family.’ And they made their crests, with symbols of love, respect, joy… and with airplanes.
I suppose that for King David, recognizing that he had failed was very hard, but his humility and clarity were precisely what allowed good to prevail over evil. I understand that for those who once dreamed of a different Cuba and made a Revolution, it must be very difficult to see how everything is sinking, how the crisis of the basics corrodes the people they wanted to save. It must be depressing to see how the people flee en masse, by any means, and defies seas, jungles, rivers… just to escape from here. It must be very tough to see how even children and teenagers dream of airplanes.
I also understand that it must be very difficult for the people who once gave their soul, heart, and life to this Revolution, to say, in their old age: ‘I was wrong, I offered my only existence to a failed project.’
I understand that it’s hard, but I wonder again and again: Don’t those who hold the decisions over this people see? Don’t they understand the will and the desire for freedom and prosperity of their own people? Does it make sense to stay in a dead-end? Or is their policy an absurd ‘”resist and conquer,” knowing that what they understand by “conquer” is no longer possible, nor will it be, even if Russia, China, or the planet Mars support us?
To you, who have political power over this land, and to those who allow that political power to be exercised, I ask: What more do you need to see, how many more families broken by emigration, how many more deaths on the path to a dream of prosperity, how many more imprisoned for demanding freedom…? What more do you need to realize that Cuba has become a nightmare? What more do you need to recognize that this doesn’t work and that it will only bring more suffering and misery? What more do you need to open the doors of this prison and allow all of us, including yourselves, to walk towards the light?
Oh, the ruling class knows perfectly well that ordinary Cubans live a miserable third-world existence which is just that, existing, not actually living. It simply doesn’t care–and never will, as long as it’s in power.