Pope Francis' Subersive Visit to Cuba
IBDEditorials.com
The Castro regime showed its worst face on the
arrival of Pope Francis in Cuba, hauling out its
goons and showing how risky this papal visit is to
the Marxist dictatorship.
Some 60 dissidents were arrested and beaten across
Cuba by security agents. Their crime? Wanting to
attend Mass with the visiting pontiff, who had
reached out to them with formal invitations.
They were some of the top names among Cuba's
democracy campaigners and included Marta Beatriz
Roque, Jorge Luis "Antunez" Garcia Perez and Berta
Soler of the human rights group Ladies in White. The
Castro regime wasn't subtle, either, attacking and
hauling off the bloodied dissidents even as the
global television cameras rolled.
Such a crackdown called for a far harder reaction
from the Vatican, which had a right to expect basic
respect for its choice of Cuban guests for Mass and
other events. All the same, there was plenty in
Francis' visit that could be described only as
subversive, and the regime's violent reaction was
proof.
History shows that papal visits to such hideous
regimes have resulted in their toppling within a
year or so, and not just in Eastern Europe, where
Pope John Paul II's 1976 visit is widely credited
with injecting life into the Solidarity movement.
Repressive regimes in Paraguay, Argentina and Chile
fell after papal visits in the 1980s, says Vatican
expert John L. Allen, who edits the Catholic website
Crux. We might add Nicaragua, where John Paul
lowered a finger at the Sandinista regime and
blasted its repression.
Francis didn't have the wherewithal to do that in
Cuba. But his condemnation of "ideology" was
significant enough. He needn't be more specific by
attaching an "ism"; Cuba has only one ideology —
communism.
The Pope's homily to the Cubans, on the Gospel story
of how the tax collector Matthew converted from
being a detested cog in the repressive state
apparatus in favor of following Christ, was also
subversive. It was an invitation to bureaucrats to
reject Cuba's evil system in favor of something more
just.
Yes, the pope could have done more, and dictator
Raul Castro bird-dogged him everywhere in a bid to
use him to reinforce his legitimacy.
But Francis did a lot on his Cuba visit to hit
Castro where it hurts. Castro has survived two papal
visits, but with this he may not make it three times
lucky.