Here are the two revolting articles published in today’s L’Osservatore Romano, the official newspaper of the Vatican.  Cotton candy reporting by Mario Ponzi, who has given a whole new meaning to the term “Ponzi Scheme.”  Spun sugar: a tissue of misinformation, wrapped around a cone of complicity with evil.  Among the great accomplishments touted for this papal trip from hell:  the Holy Father has requested that Good Friday become an official holiday for the Cuban people.  Yes, that will help.  A feast day for eleven million crucified Cubans, who line the Carretera Central from one end of the island to the other.    Read it and weep.  Or seethe.  Try not to go into seizures when you read this part: “Afterwards Benedict XVI and the President of Cuba came out on to the patio of the Palacio de la Revolución to greet the throng of journalists, photographers and cameramen, who had flocked there to immortalize the warm handshake exchanged by the two men.”

Pero mira que pesados son estos cubanos gusanos del exilio, siempre quejándose de todo, totalmente obsesionados con lo que perdieron, sacando a luz las faltas del prójimo, comiendo mierda, esperando la esfinge de la justicia y el fantasma de la caridad cristiana..  Le zumba al mango, &^%$#@!

Arriving in Santiago de Cuba after saying farewell to Mexico

Cuba, island of wonders and pirates, island of Márquez and Hemingway, of Fidel Castro and Che Guevara, of Felix Varela and José Martí, enchantment and delusion, a legend to some, a prison to  others, and  today it is found to be an island of hope. It is a hope sprung from the warm embrace reserved to the Padrecito blanco, who comes in the name of Mary to celebrate what seems to be a new spring.

The Cuban’s meeting with the Pope, just arrived in Santiago de Cuba,  strongly desired, stirs up the memory those days in January, 1998, when John Paul II, in that same Plaza de la Revolución where Benedict XVI  will celebrate Mass in Havana on Wednesday morning, his second Mass on the island, fed the the light of a faith, hidden perhaps but never extinguished. That same faith accompanied, accompanies now and will continue to accompany the Cuban people on their journey towards a better future which everyone wants, despite the renunciations more or less obligatory,  of the challenges old and new and of the many sacrifices awaiting them still.

Benedict XVI meets Raúl Castro

The private meeting between Benedict XVI and Raúl Castro took place on Tuesday, March 27, at the Presidential Palace in Havana and lasted for about 40 minutes, while at the same time the Vatican Delegation, led by the Cardinal Secretary of State, and the Delegation of the Cuban Government, led by the Vice-President of the Council of State and of the Council of Ministers, held a similar meeting. Among the topics discussed Fr Federico Lombardi, SJ, Director of the Holy See Press Office, announced “the expectations of the Cuban Church and her desire to expand here further, to make a positive contribution to the country’s good”. Fr Lombardi also mentioned the request that Good Friday be recognized as a holiday in the Caribbean island which the Pope made to President Raúl Castro of Cuba, recalling that in 1998, at the end of his visit, John Paul II had asked and obtained from Fidel Castro similar recognition for Christmas Day.

Afterwards Benedict XVI and the President of Cuba came out on to the patio of the Palacio de la Revolución to greet the throng of journalists, photographers and cameramen, who had flocked there to immortalize the warm handshake exchanged by the two men.

As expected, the Holy Father has found time in his very tight schedule to meet with the greatest crusader for human rights on earth, his excellency King Fidel, close friend and confidant of the saintly muslim leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Whether or not this meeting marks the first step towards the canonization of the Maximum Leader and whether or not the Iranian president would join the party remains a matter of speculation.

In his “Reflections” published in the award-winning newspaper of record, Granma, Fidel waxed eloquently on his own efforts to save the planet from poverty, disease, hunger, and injustice.  In his own inimitable Gongoresque style, so reminiscent of the best prose from Spain’s Golden Age, the ever-self-effacing Fidel said:

“With great pleasure I will greet His Excellency Pope Benedict XVI on Wednesday, as I did with John Paul II, a man whose contact with the children and the humble people of this nation elicited unanimous feelings of affection.”

He also called for a “union” between marxists and Christians, saying that “with their religious and political beliefs,” they should “struggle for justice and peace among all human beings.”

In addition, he expressed his deep concern for the fate of humankind, lamenting the fact that “a growing number of people on earth lack housing, bread, water, education, and employment, while the riches of the Earth are squandered and wasted on weapons and fratricidal wars.”    Wags, of course, immediately pointed out that his description of the entire world seems to be based on the situation faced by the Cuban people as a result of his leadership.

Unofficial reports also seem to confirm the future saint Fidel’s first miracle:  the instantaneous disappearance from the island  of the Ladies in White and all dissidents.  Speculation runs wild about their teleportation to Miami, where they allegedly appeared at the Versailles restaurant on Calle Ocho, begging for Cuban sandwiches.

Read the entire heartbreaking Kafkaesque report here, in Spanish.

Here is one of the several pieces of hate mail that I’ve received in response to my letter concerning the proposed Che monument in Ireland. I’m posting it for pedagogical reasons. We should all be aware of the hatred we face. As the Apostle St. Paul says:  it is our duty to expose  “the unfruitful deeds of darkness.”  (Ephesians 5:11)
If you are interested in responding, the sender’s email is: mdblock@me.com

As a tenth-generation American, I can say with moral authority that it would be a far, far better thing for my country had we not allowed these insidious Cuban ingrates to immigrate to our country. I’m sure that you are aware that Castro sent many crazy Cubans to America during the Mariel boatlift. It seems that we have suffered the consequence of the colossal mistake of allowing these people to come to our country.

An insidious Cuban ingrate, Lincoln Diaz-Balart stated on NPR some time ago that there would be a yearly $500 billion dollar business for Cuba if “we” were to let U.S. tourists go there. The American people should not tolerate insidious ingrates from Cuba telling us where we can and cannot go. Senator Rubio misrepresented the fact about when and why his people immigrated to America. In fact, he has been very disingenuous in conjunction with many of his comments to the point that one can only assume he is a pathological liar. The questions is not why did they come to America, but why did we allow them to come to America. They have trashed our country, our Hallowed Halls of Congress, they have trashed our values and our credibility. It would be a far, far better thing for America if you Cubans had become lunch for sharks!
Cuban immigrants, Lincoln Diaz-Balart and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen have done a great injustice to the people of Cuba who could have a better quality of live if they had not prevented it. They were fortunate enough to immigrate to America to enjoy the freedoms for which we sacrificed, but they have worked their Cuban hearts out to make sure the people in Cuba don’t enjoy access to just the basic. They feel superior, but they are inferior to the people living in Cuba. They have betrayed the people of Cuba and have used America to advance their pernicious cause and America is profoundly ashamed for allowing this un-American behavior. They are a disgrace to my country and to Cuba! Obviously, America has become home to the undesirable Cubans while the more desirable still live in Cuba. Castro is a very savvy person. He inflicted the worst of Cuba on America – Diaz-Balart and Ros-Lehtinen along with so many other Cubans who are an insult to our Democracy! Ros-Lehtinen has worked her Cuban heart out for Israel. It is profoundly embarrassing to watch her subservient shilling for Israel as ‘support for Israel’ is a stated reason for the assault on 9-11. As a member of Congress, she is responsible for helping Israel murder many Palestinians and she has diverted money allocated for the Palestinians to go to Israel. Cubans have no shame! At long last, Cubans have no decency!

Ros-Lehtinen and Lincoln Diaz-Balart make Che Guevara look like a choir boy! They are the corrupt ones responsible for so much harm to the Palestinians and to the people in Cuba. These insidious Cubans have no shame. At long last, they have no decency!

Please don’t make the mistake America has made by allowing these insidious Cubans to diminish your right to have a memorial celebrating Galway links with Che Guevara. Galway can be proud of Che Guevara while America is profoundly embarrassed having these insidious Cubans call themselves Americans! They are not synonymous with America in any way! I would gladly exchange these vile Cubans for Che Guevara!

After squinting through binoculars into a nation frozen in time, US President Barack Obama reeled off a contempt-laden and startlingly frank indictment.

“It is like you are in a time warp,” said the president of the United States. “It is like you are looking across 50 years into a country that has missed 40 years or 50 years of progress,”

“If a country can’t feed its people effectively, if it can’t make anything of any use to anybody, if it has no exports other than weapons and even those aren’t ones that in any way would be considered state of the art.”

“If it can’t deliver on any indicators of well-being… for its people… then you’d think you’d want to try something different,” Obama said in a highly undiplomatic public appearance.

He summed it all up by saying: “There are certain things that just don’t work and what they are doing doesn’t work.”

If you were led to believe that he was speaking about Cuba –a country that matches all of the qualities mentioned above — sorry.  Wrong.  Fooled you, Humberto-style.  The country in question is North Korea, not Cuba.

One wonders what Obama might have had to say about making concessions to North Korea, easing sanctions, and ensuring a steady stream of tourists through people-to-people programs.

Imagine what he might say when he tours Havana in 2013, after his reelection, as he sips a mojito. “Wonderful healthcare. Great education. This works beautifully!”

No doubt about it. After he is reelected, it is highly likely that he will join the people-to-people parade, and visit the island, ensuring the survival of Castrolandia. As he said to Russian President Medvedev yesterday: “After my election, I’ll have more flexibility.”

Read more here

According to one Venezuelan physician, Hugo Chavez stands no chance of surviving his cancer.   And the care he has received in Cuba has been “disastrous.”

Dr. José Rafael Marquina, a Venezuelan physician who resides in Florida was interviewed yesterday by the Spanish newspaper ABC. The subject was Hugo Chavez’s illness and the medical treatment he has been receiving. Dr. Marquina claims to get his information directly from those who treated Chavez in Cuba.

According to Dr. Marquina, Chavez will be dead by November or December. The best he can hope for is to linger until April 2013, about a year from now.

Here is an interview published in the Spanish newspaper ABC (my translation):

What kind of treatment will Chavez receive in Caracas after his return from Havana?

– They will give him about 30 sessions of radiotherapy, not 25 as previously thought. He has already begun this treatment in Caracas at the military hospital.

How many sessions did he have in Cuba? What were the results?

– He had ten sessions in Cuba and Chavez has not responded to the theraphy. The problem with the treatment he received in the Cuban medical center was that it was carried out in a very disorganized way. It was suspended when the Colombian president Santos came to visit. It was a disaster. They were subjecting him to radiation without any tattoos.

What does that mean?

-One always needs to mark the area where radiation will be applied. The cuban doctors began the procedure without tattooing him first, because they said it wasn’t necessary. They would wake him up at 6 a.m., take him to the first floor of the CIMEQ medical center, take a computerized tomograph (a three-dimensional x-ray) and then subject him to radiation. His Brazilian doctor recommended that he be tattooed when he examined him on Thursday the 15th.

How much radiation was he given?

– In Cuba they gave him 5,000 rads per session and per area. I don’t know how much in Caracas. Everything related to his radiotheraphy is a mystery and no one wants to divulge information.

Read more

A must read for every human being on earth: a survivor’s account of life in a North Korean prison camp for those beyond “redemption.”    It’s the testimony of Shin Dong-hyuk , who was born in the camp and lived there until he escaped.

You can find it at Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Escape-Camp-14-Remarkable-Odyssey/dp/0670023329/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1332122975&sr=1-1

No other country on earth resembles Cuba more than North Korea. And their suffering exceeds ours by more than ten years.  They make us look like lightweights.

Which raises many questions, but one above all: If North Korea were in the tropics and had beautiful beaches, would tourists flock to it?  Would there be golf courses right next to the prison camps?

Read the bare-bone details and weep: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/mar/16/escape-north-korea-prison-camp

A brief preview:

The guards taught the children they were prisoners because of the “sins” of their parents but that they could “wash away” their inherent sinfulness by working hard, obeying the guards and informing on their parents.

One day, Shin joined his mother at work, planting rice. When she fell behind, a guard made her kneel in the hot sun with her arms in the air until she passed out. Shin did not know what to say to her, so he said nothing….

If Shin’s mother met her daily work quota, she could bring home food. At 4am, she would prepare breakfast and lunch for her son and for herself. Every meal was the same: corn porridge, pickled cabbage and cabbage soup. Shin was always hungry and he would eat his lunch as soon as his mother left for work. He also ate her lunch. When she came back from the fields at midday and found nothing to eat, she would beat him with a shovel….

Shin was nine years old, and he and his classmates were walking towards the train station, where their teacher had sent them to pick up coal. To get there they had to pass below the guards’ compound. From above, the guards’ children shouted: “Reactionary sons of bitches are coming.” Rocks rained down on the prison children. Shin and his classmates shrieked and cowered. A rock struck Shin on the head, knocking him to the ground. When his head cleared, many of his classmates were moaning and bleeding. Moon Sung Sim had been knocked out.

When their teacher discovered his bloodied students sprawled in the road, he became angry. “What are you doing not getting yourselves to work?” he shouted. The students timidly asked what they should do with their classmates who were unconscious. “Put them on your backs and carry them,” the teacher instructed.

Surprise! Fidel Castro is a wise, kind, gentle humanitarian – and an intellectual too.

So says Cuban writer Katiuska Blanco, in the first two volumes of what promises to be a very heavy bookshelf-busting multi-volume biography of the great man: “Fidel, guerrillero del tiempo” (Fidel, guerrila fighter of time). These first two volumes alone add up to 1,666 pages.

The highly objective Blanco details how Fidel is a voracious reader who spends much of his time curled up with books by Stephen Hawking and Charles Darwin, two authors he deems essential for understanding human nature – along with Karl Marx. His greatest worry, of course, is how to avoid “ecological disaster” and how to help the human race.

He cares so deeply. So, so deeply.

And, of course, Neither he nor Blanco could be called superstitious. The fact that the number of pages includes the digits “666″ doesn’t trouble them at all.

All hail King Fidel el Sabio, Fidel the Wise!   Could sainthood or divinity be denied to him?  Who would dare to deny it?

A few tidbits from Katiuska Blanco, chancletera extraordinaria:

“Fidel is a man who reads a lot, and he is always trying to figure out how to make the earth produce more, always searching for ways to save his nation, the region, and the whole world from ecological disaster….the ecology is his greatest worry because the future of the human race depends on it.”

“Fidel is a man who manages to make one believe that one is speaking with a close relative, but, of course, one is always aware of the fact that one is speaking with a legend.”

“Fidel is always asking questions about the atom, about time, about the stars, and also about the daily life of human beings.”

Read about it here, in Castilian: http://www.abc.es/20120316/internacional/abci-castro-darwin-biografia-201203161911.html

Zut alors! Eet seems zat ze most famous acteur in France has a leetle beet of trouble distinguishing between ze monstrous and ze holy.

Gerard Depardieu said yesterday zat he doesn’t like dictateurs and to prove it he proclaimed his love for Fidel Castro. And in ze same breath he added “and John Paul II too.”

Ze great acteur who recently unzipped his trousers on a plane and peed into a bottle, spilling his urine all over ze seats also added zat he didn’t like Dominique Strauss-Kahn because ze sex-crazed maniac is “arrogant” and “self-satisfied.”

Ze great Depardieu, who has appeared in every single French film since 1968, has just announced he will play the role of Strauss-Kahn in an upcoming film. “Yes, because I don’t like him I’m going to do it.”

So, zere you have eet: Fidel ees not a dictateur. And he ees not arrogant or self-satisfied.

Unfortunatelee, no one asked ze great acteur to ponder hees own arrogance and smugness, or any resemblances between hees attitude towards women and that of le monster Strauss-Kahn. And no one brought up zees quote from a previous interview weeth ze great acteur, in which he said::

“My eye will roam with equal pleasure over the face of a beautiful woman as it will over the cuts of meat displayed in a butcher’s shop window.”

For zee whole deesgusteeng thing see:http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/03/15/entertainment-us-france-politics-depardi-idUSBRE82E13K20120315

and: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-17397494

How utterly sad and disappointing. Santeros in Cuba are upset that Pope Benedict XVI will not devote any time to them during his two-day visit to the island. Imagine that.  How can this be possible?  After all, in the human zoo of Castrolandia, these specimens of the noble savage are among the most popular attractions.  How could the pope ignore them?

Imagine also being a journalist and spending time on something so utterly trivial rather than on  the dissidents who want to meet with the pope.   Imagine also seeking to “balance” this very long report by quoting ignoramuses who view Santeria–a polytheistic African religion that the Catholic Church officially considers to be demonic — as just another version of Catholicism.  Of course, the ignoramuses are cited as “Church experts.” I suppose this is further proof of the fact that when it comes to “experts” quoted by the mainstream media their top guiding principle is  to gloss over all important distinctions and to make anyone who points out these facts look unreasonable.

HAVANA (AP) — They cast snail shells to read their fortunes, proudly wear colorful necklaces to ward off illness, dress all in white and dance in “bata” drum ceremonies.
But although their Afro-Cuban Santeria religion owes much to Roman Catholicism, many are decidedly unenthusiastic about Pope Benedict XVI’s March 26-28 tour of Cuba, even if it is being hailed as a watershed moment for a church seeking to boost its influence on this Communist-run island.
Santero priests still remember the last time a pontiff came to town — and flatly refused to meet with them. They are expecting no better treatment this time, and some are openly disappointed.
Their religion is by far the most popular on the island, with adherents outnumbering practicing mainstream Catholics 8-1. Yet as far as the Catholic church is concerned, “we live in the basement, where nobody sees us,” said Lazaro Cuesta, a Santero high priest with a strong grip and a penetrating gaze.
“We have already seen one pope visit … and at no moment did he see fit to talk to us.”….

Santeros nevertheless took it as just another sign that on an island with a white majority, some still see it as a slave-barracks faith, an idea that goes against Cuban ideals of respect for diversity.

Santeros nevertheless took it as just another sign that on an island with a white majority, some still see it as a slave-barracks faith, an idea that goes against Cuban ideals of respect for diversity.

John Paul’s decision to ignore the Santeros, Cuesta said, was a decision “to deny our national patrimony … brought to us by men in chains who arrived as slaves in this country.”

Read the whole sad story here.

NEWS FLASH: CHAVEZ VISITS CUBA TO BE HYPNOTIZED, NOT FOR CANCER TREATMENTS

A daring photographer snuck into the Castro palace this morning, hid behind a tall stack of gold bullion bars brought there by the Venezuelan president, and captured this image of Hugo Chavez being hypnotized by Fidel Castro. Now that the cat is out of the bag, it remains to be seen what kind of spin the two humanitarians put on these revelations.
The photographer also recorded some of the session. Here is a partial transcript:

Fidel: Oye, gordo, presta atención, y cierra los ojos, coño.
Hugo: Ya me pusistes tieso con esa injección, Fidel, ahora que? Me vas a robar el oro?
Fidel: No, chico, tranquilito, ese oro no me interesa a mí.
Hugo: Y pa’ que tengo que cerrar los ojos, entonces?
Fidel: No te preocupes, gordo, el tratamiento requiere que los cierres.
Hugo: Pero pa’ que?
Fidel: Pa’ que te pueda hypnotizar. Sabes que fuí discípulo de Mandrake el mago?
Hugo: No me digas!
Fidel: Si, cierralos bien, coño, y empieza a contar al revés.
Hugo: 100, 99, 98, …….. ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ
Fidel: Y ahora, te despertarás cuando yo te meta un dedo en la nariz y te saque un moco.
Hugo: ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ
Fidel: Oye, Raúl, trae la rastra, que hay que sacar el oro de aquí antes de que se despierte el bobo. Y llama a la embajada suiza, rápido, y diles que nos hace falta una bóveda en Zurich!

English translation:

Fidel: Hey, fatty, pay attention, and close your eyes, damn it.
Hugo: You’ve already made me all stiff with that injection; now what? Are you going to steal my gold?
Fidel: No, man, I’m not interested in your gold.
Hugo: And why do I have to close my eyes, then?
Fidel: Don’t worry, fatty, this treatment requires it.
Hugo: But why?
Fidel: So I can hypnotize you. Don’t you know that I was taught by Mandrake the Magician?
Hugo: You don’t say!
Fidel: Yeah, close those eyes real tight, damn it, and begin to count backwards.
Hugo: 100, 99, 98, …….. ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ
Fidel: And now, you will wake up when I stick my finger up your nose and pull out a booger.
Hugo: ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ
Fidel: Hey, Raul, bring the eighteen-wheeler, we need to get this gold out of here before the jerk wakes up. And , quick, call the Swiss embassy and tell them we need a vault in Zurich!

NEWS FLASH: SICKLY-LOOKING EX-DICTATOR WHO ONCE ALMOST BLEW UP THE WHOLE WORLD AND IS NOT SORRY FOR IT MEETS WITH ANTI-NUKE “ACTIVISTS” IN HAVANA

No kidding. If there is anything beyond absurdity or beyond hypocrisy, this must be it. There is no name for it, but here it is: a megalomaniac who once filled his kingdom with Soviet nuclear missiles aimed at the United States, and who also itched so much to push the button that his Soviet overlords were compelled to take them away – lest they, too, be annihilated in retaliation for the megalomaniac’s wanton murder of millions of Americans – is now promoting himself as an apostle of peace and an anti-nuke prophet.

There he was today, hosting a group of 770 “activists” whose “Cruise for Peace” had docked in Havana harbor. Among them were a few survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, who eagerly shook hands with the megalomaniac and one-time trigger-happy nuclear warrior, mistaking him for a Ghandi-like pacifist.

Now, ask yourself, why would any anti-nuke cruise visit the only nation on earth that has ever really and truly brought the world to the brink of nuclear annihilation, and why would these “activists” visit the only man on earth who has ever come close to actually pushing THE button?

The Spanish press reports that it was an “emotional encounter”  capped off by a speech from the colostomy-bag laden and Japanese-jacket-wearing megalomaniac – who was described as “desmejorado” or “unwell” or “sickly” by some brave journalist – in which he said, among other things, that “the world needs to defend the most important cause of all, which is the survival of the species.”

Yeah, he sort of made an allusion to Darwin… sort of…. but none to the fact that, as far as he is concerned, the species needs to survive so he and others like him have someone to enslave, or to blow up with nuclear bombs.  He does still itch to push the button, you know, and rues the day he let Nikita take his toys away from him.

Damn. How does he pull it off? Must be that deal with the Devil, long ago. It does seem to work for him, though.  Look at him: he looks as guileless as  Topol in “Fiddler on the Roof, ” or like a Gallego Santa Claus, if ever such a being could exist: a Gallego who gave stuff away instead of hoarding it.   (Hey, don’t accuse me of stereotyping, I’m half Gallego and entitled to make fun of myself and my people).

Look at him and at the two men with him: the bodyguard to his right, scowling in his halfway-pressed guayabera, scanning the crowd for “gusanos” and CIA agents, and the sheepish robot-like “activist” whose wrist he has grabbed with his left hand, and ask yourself, does this man look the least bit troubled by all the suffering he has caused, or his consummate hypocrisy?  Then, go read Psalm 73.  It will make you feel better.

Full report here in Spanish. It’s so sickening I can’t bring myself to translate it:

http://www.abc.es/20120302/internacional/abci-fidel-castro-desmejorado-hiroshima-201203021718.html

Today, I mailed this letter to His Holiness, Pope Benedict XVI. The Vatican does not accept email, so it’s making its way across the Atlantic Ocean the way that all correspondence did before the advent of the internet. Whether or not it will reach the Pope is anyone’s guess. But it seems worth trying.   At least I had a few old Air Mail envelopes stuck in a drawer, the kind with blue and red stripes along the edge — the kind I used to send to Cuba aeons ago, when I still had relatives there.  Who knows?  It might catch the eye of some Vatican postal worker.

His Holiness, Pope Benedict XVI 27 February 2012
Apostolic Palace
00120 Vatican City

Most Holy Father:

I’m writing to thank you for your upcoming visit to Cuba. It is very heartening to know that you will be visiting eleven million prisoners. After all, that whole island is a prison, and all of its inhabitants prisoners.

I write not only as a Cuban but as one of your flock and as a scholar. The professorship I hold here at Yale University – named after Yale’s first Catholic chaplain – is the chair in Catholic studies. Oddly enough, many at this very secular university think that I am your nuncio and in constant contact with you, simply because I hold the Catholic chair.

So, I am now finally doing what they think I often do, writing to you.

All of the imprisoned in Cuba need your visit, desperately. Your physical presence will do much to uplift their spirits, and give them a glimpse of the world beyond their salt-water prison walls, perhaps even a glimmer of The Kingdom of Heaven itself, especially when you celebrate the holy sacrifice of the Mass and Christ is made present among them.

You will have to meet with the tyrants, jailers, and executioners, of course. That is inevitable. Not much has changed since Our Lord said “See, I am sending you out like sheep among wolves,” The tyrants and their henchmen will probably attend Mass, as they did when your predecessor the Venerable John Paul II visited the island some years ago.

These men need you too, in their own twisted way. They hope your visit will lend them an aura of legitimacy, fatten their coffers, and fool the world into thinking that they are not tyrants after all.

Many of your predecessors have dealt with such men, under worse circumstances. We Cubans know that those will not be easy moments for you. But our prayers will accompany every step you take, and every handshake too. And we are confident that the Holy Spirit will help you deal with these wolves as Our Lord Jesus Christ advised nearly two thousand years ago, when he told his disciples to be “as cunning as serpents yet as innocent as doves.”

I have but one request: please meet with the Ladies in White while you are in Cuba. They have asked for this themselves, through your nuncio Monsignor Bruno Musaro, with whom they met a few weeks ago. Bless them with your presence, please, Most Holy Father. They are brave beyond belief; but, subjected as they are to constant physical and mental abuse, and to the constant threat of imprisonment or death, they are in dire need of your blessing.

As you well know, they are often attacked and beaten and prevented from attending church; sometimes they’ve even been attacked inside churches. They are living out the gospel, at a high cost, laying their lives down for their brethren. Like the Canaanite woman who cried out to Jesus, ‘Lord, help me!’ or the woman who touched the hem of Jesus’s robe in hope of a cure, they are reaching out, full of faith, begging against all odds. In an island where everyone has been turned into a beggar, they beg for the rarest and most precious gift of all: your presence.

And, oh, what a sight that would be for all the world to see! You and the Ladies in White together. What a jolt to the senses: an image so unexpected, it might restore sight to those blinded by hate, perhaps, or stem the flow of blood that has stained that beautiful prison island for far too long. It might even make demons flee, too.

Your power as Vicar of Christ is unique. You command the world’s attention. You serve as the world’s conscience. Your public acknowledgment of the Ladies in White could change the course of history. They pray for that; we all pray for it too, along with them. I, a beggar, driven from my homeland fifty years ago, join the bold Ladies in begging. We beg like the blind man who would not stop crying out to Jesus and yelled all the louder when told to shut up.

And we beg in the name of Jesus, hoping you will hear our voices above the din made by those who want us not to be seen or heard.

Humbly yours, in Christ,

Carlos M. N. Eire
T. Lawrason Riggs Professor of History and Religious Studies

Here is a PDF of the actual letter: pope letter LIW