In My Opinion
Cuban cardinal's prayers ignore real victims
By Fabiola Santiago
fsantiago@MiamiHerald.com
Sometimes the echo of a prayer travels far, much too far.
Sometimes a prayer sounds less like a prayer and more like a political move.
Sometimes, as happened Sunday in Havana, that prayer reaches our ears in
Miami and rattles our faith, breaks our hearts.
Cardinal Jaime Ortega, the highest Catholic authority on the island, and
the Apostolic Nuncio to Cuba, Bruno Musaro, offered a Mass in the
Cathedral of Havana to pray for the health of Venezuelan President Hugo
Chavez, who had a cancerous tumor removed from his pelvis on Feb. 24 in
the Cuban capital.
The cathedral was packed with the faithful, and in a country where the
government all but prohibited religious worship until the 1998 visit of
Pope John Paul II, the attendees included the foreign ministers of Cuba
and Venezuela and other well-known Cuban government supporters.
No doubt Chavez needs the prayers. On so many levels, the strongman with
a recurrence of cancer who wants to turn Venezuela into another bastion
of totalitarian rule needs the prayers.
But where are the merciful public prayers and the dedicated homilies of
the island's Catholic hierarchy for those who suffer in Cuba at the
hands of the ruthless Cuban government, a 53-year dictatorship supported
by the likes of Chavez?
Where were the public prayers when dissident Orlando Zapata was
languishing in a prison and then a hospital on the hunger strike that
weakened him so much it killed him?
Where were the public prayers of the Catholic hierarchy when the founder
of the Ladies in White, Laura Pollan, was agonizing in a hospital, dying
from a sudden and suspiciously contracted respiratory disease?
Are the prayers of Ortega and Musaro indeed prayers or politics, a
calculated move of religious chess aimed at facilitating the highly
anticipated trip of the Pope to Cuba later this month? Is being an
oppressed Catholic, as long as one is a Catholic, good enough for a
cardinal who has a history of falling short when it comes to defending
his people but who appears to be highly attuned to the needs of the
dictatorship?
In a recent letter to Pope Benedict XVI, dissident Guillermo Fariñas,
who also came close to dying on a hunger strike, warns the pontiff that
his visit to Cuba could send the message to the government that it can
continue to abuse opponents who fight for basic human rights.
Some 750 dissidents across the island signed the letter, which asks the
pontiff to meet with members of the opposition during his visit.
One can only pray that their words don't fall on deaf ears, and that
religious leaders have a worthier mission in mind.
But for now all we hear are the Sunday prayers of a cardinal and a
nuncio, and as benevolent as they may appear to charitable Catholic
ears, they have already spoken volumes in a church where many of "the
faithful" were dressed in the colors of the Venezuelan flag as if they
were attending a political rally.
In Miami — where some are preparing for a pilgrimage to Cuba to
participate in the Pope's visit, where the Catholic Church is involved
in apostolate work on the island, and from where thousands of dollars in
humanitarian aid to the island flows — the faithful await answers to
their prayers.
Because they too have prayers, only they seldom seem to reach Havana,
where the presence of good always feels so, so far away.
http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/03/06/2679200/cuban-cardinals-prayers-ignore.html
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