continued … The Cat
holic Church remains an important political institution in Cuba even though attendance is low. It helped negotiate the release of scores of jailed dissidents in 2011 and 2012. The Castro government has made major concessions to church authorities since the 1990s. Good Friday and Christmas are now official holidays on the island, and Midnight Mass is broadcast on Cuban state television every Dec. 24. President Obama has removed Cuba from the list of state sponsors of terrorism and the U.S. will reestablish diplomatic relations with Cuba, severed back in 1962. Obama said that Pope Francis helped spur the change and personally thanked him. Cuban President Raúl Castro met with Pope Francis at the Vatican on Sunday May 10, 2015 and thanked the pontiff for his role in rekindling relations between the Unit-ed States and his nation. Castro said he was so impressed with the Pope that “I will go back to praying and go back to the church, and I’m not joking.” The fact that the man who helped lead the Cuban Revolution would even joke about returning to the Catholic Church shows just how far the relationship between Havana and the Vatican has moved forward recently. Fidel Castro and Raul his younger brother by 5 year were both baptized as Catholics but never practiced their religion. Both were kicked out of their local school for bad behavior and both went on to be educated in a private Jesuit boarding school. Unlike his brother, Raul was not much interested in studies. After years of revolution, the Cuban government was overthrown and Fidel took power. Raúl acted as an executioner during the Revolution and afterwards. He was known for his ruthlessness and brutality and has been one of Cuba’s top-ranking military officers. Most of his life was spent under the shadow of his elder brother and he was always seen as the right hand of Fidel. The key role Pope Francis played in encouraging talks between Presidents Barack Obama and Raul Castro left fractures among older Catholic in South Florida, where the Castro brothers are equated with the devil. Many Catholics worldwide have expressed pride in seeing Francis stirring hopes of progress in communist Cuba, but some Cuban-Americans say their spiritual leader betrayed them. Efrain Rivas, a 53-year-old maintenance man in Miami who was a political prisoner in Cuba for 16 years said he cried when Obama surprisingly announced a reversal of a half-century’s efforts to isolate Cuba. Then, when he learned of Pope Francis’ role, he got angry. Miami Archbishop Thomas Wenski acknowledged that some Catholics are “concerned or suspicious,” but said many more exiles welcome the breakthrough, despite their suffering. “The pain is real, but the Archbishop said “you can’t build a future on top of resentments.”
References: The Blaze.com, NPR.org, USA Today, BBC, CNN.com, Washington Post, NBC.com, US News.
