The Church, Pope Francis and Cuba
By Jose Azel
WorldAffairsJournal.org
Eight hundred years ago, the Magna Carta laid the
foundations for individual freedoms, the rule of law
and for limits on the absolute power of the ruler.
King John of England, who signed this great
document, believed that since he governed by divine
right, there were no limits on his authority. But
his need for money outweighed this principle and he
acceded to his barons’ demand to sign the document
limiting his powers, in exchange for their help.
King John then appealed to Pope Innocent III who
promptly declared the Magna Carta to be “not only
shameful and demeaning but also illegal and unjust”
and deemed the charter to be “null and void of all
validity forever.” Thus from the beginning of the
conflict between individual rights and unlimited
authority, the Church sided with authority. It is a
position that, with notable exceptions has, and
continues to characterize the conduct of
Church-State affairs.
In 1929, the Holy See signed with Benito Mussolini’s
Fascist government the Lateran Treaty which
recognized the Vatican as an independent state. In
exchange for the Pope’s public support, Mussolini
also agreed to provide the Church with financial
backing.
In 1933, the Vatican’s Secretary of State Eugenio
Pacelli (later Pope Pius XII) signed on behalf of
Pope Pius XI, the Reich Concordat to advance the
rights of the Catholic Church in Germany. The treaty
predictably gave moral legitimacy to the Nazi regime
and constrained the political activism of the German
Catholic clergy which had been critical of Nazism.
Similarly, advancing the Church’s interests in Cuba
is the explanation given for the Church’s hierarchy
coziness with the Castro regime.
For most of us the Catholic Church is simply a
religion, but the fact is that it is also a state
with its own international politico-economic
interests and views. It is hard to discern the
defense of any moral or religious principles in the
above historic undertakings of the Church-State.
These doings of the Church, as a state in
partnership with authoritarian rule, are in sharp
contrast with the Biblical rendition, where Christ
was persecuted for his political views by a
tyrannical regime acting in complicity with the
leadership of His church. Cubans today are also
politically persecuted by a tyrannical regime. The
question arises as to whether the leadership of the
Catholic Church will side with the people or with
the Castro regime.
Pope Francis probably, was not thinking of Magna
Carta, the Lateran Treaty or the Reich Concordat,
when he warmly received General Raul Castro in the
Vatican earlier this spring, and he probably won’t
be thinking about that foundational document for
individual freedoms, the rule of law and for limits
on the absolute power of the ruler or how the
medieval Church spurned it when he travels to Cuba
in September. But the questions of the Vatican’s
support for authoritarianism and the Pope’s
political ideology will be in the background of his
visit nonetheless.
In political terms, Pope Francis is himself the head
of an authoritarian state -an oligarchical theocracy
where only the aristocracy -the Princes of the
College of Cardinals- participate in the selection
of the ruler. Most religions do not follow a
democratic structure, but the Catholic Church is
unique in that it is also a state recognized by
international law.
Pope Francis may seem to be sailing against the
winds of this structure in some of his carefully
publicized “iconoclasms,” but clues he has left as
to his political and economic thought regarding Cuba
show someone very comfortable with certain status
quos.
In 1998, then Archbishop of Buenos Aires, Monsignor
Jorge Mario Bergoglio, as the Pope was then known,
authored a book titled: “Dialogues between John Paul
II and Fidel Castro.” In my reading of the Pope’s
complex Spanish prose, he favors socialism over
capitalism provided it incorporates theism. He does
not take issue with Fidel Castro’s claim that “Karl
Marx’s doctrine is very close to the Sermon on the
Mount,” and views the Cuban polity as in harmony
with the Church’s social doctrine.
Following Church tradition he severely condemns U.S.
economic sanctions, but Pope Francis goes much
further. He uses Cuba’s inaccurate and politically
charged term “blockade” and echoes the Cuban
government’s allegations about its condign evil. He
then criticizes free markets, noting that
“neoliberal capitalism is a model that subordinates
human beings and conditions development to pure
market forces…thus humanity attends a cruel
spectacle that crystalizes the enrichment of the few
at the expense of the impoverishment of the many.”
(Author’s translation)
In his prologue to “Dialogues between John Paul II
and Fidel Castro,” Monsignor Bergoglio leaves no
doubt that he sympathizes with the Cuban
dictatorship and that he is not a fan of liberal
democracy or free markets. He clearly believes in a
very large, authoritarian role for the state in
social and economic affairs. Perhaps, as many of his
generation, the Pope’s understanding of economics
and governance was perversely tainted by Argentina’s
Peronist trajectory and the country’s continued
corrupt mixture of statism and crony capitalism.
His language in the prologue is reminiscent of the
“Liberation Theology” movement that developed in
Latin America in the 1960’s and became very
intertwined with Marxist ideology. Fathered by
Peruvian priest Gustavo Gutierrez, the liberation
theology movement provided the intellectual
foundations that, with Cuban support, served to
orchestrate “wars of national liberation” throughout
the continent. Its iconography portrayed Jesus as a
guerrilla with an AK 47 slung over his shoulder.
John Paul II and Benedict XVI censured Liberation
Theology, but after Pope Francis met with father
Gutierrez in 2013 in “a strictly private
visit,” L'Osservatore Romano, the Vatican's
semi-official newspaper, published an essay stating
that with the election of the first pope from Latin
America Liberation Theology can no longer "remain in
the shadows to which it has been relegated for some
years…”
The political ideology of the Argentinian Monsignor
Bergoglio may not have been of any transcendental
significance. But as Pope Francis, he is now the
head of a state with defined international political
and economic interests. These state-interests and
personal ideology will be in full display in his
upcoming visit to Cuba and the United States.
In “Dialogues between John Paul II and Fidel
Castro,” Pope Francis speaks of a “shared
solidarity” but, as with Pope Innocent III’s
rejection of the Magna Carta, that solidarity
appears to be with the nondemocratic illegitimate
authority in Cuba and not with the people. This is a
tragic echo of the Cuban wars for independence when
the Church sided with the Spanish Crown and not with
the Cuban “mambises” fighting for freedom. No wonder
that when Cuba gained its independence, many Cubans
saw the Church as an enemy of the new nation.
In his September visit Pope Francis will have a
chance to reverse this history and unequivocally put
the Church on the side of the people, especially
with the black and mulatto majority in the Island.
If he does not, history will judge him as unkindly
as it has Innocent III. When the Castros’ tropical
gulag finally fades into the past, Cubans will
remember that this Pope had a choice between freedom
and authoritarianism, just as his predecessor did
eight hundred years ago, and picked the wrong side.
Author's Note: I am Indebted to Diego Trinidad,
César Vidal, Andres Oppenheimer, Julio Shiling, José
Benegas, and others for ideas reflected in this
article.
*José Azel is a Senior Scholar at the Institute
for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies, University of
Miami and the author of the book “Mañana in Cuba.”
_________________________________________________