|
By Barry Moody
HAVANA, Jan 24
(Reuters) - Pope John Paul called on Saturday for the release of "prisoners
of conscience'' from Cuba's jails, capping a day of outspoken Church criticism
of the island's communist regime.
"These prisoners of conscience suffer an isolation and a penalty for
something for which their own conscience does not condemn them,'' the Pope said
during a visit to a leper hospital on the outskirts of Havana. "I encourage
efforts to re-insert prisoners into society.''
Their release would be "a gesture of high humanity and a seed of
reconciliation, a gesture which honors the authority promoting it and
strengthens social harmony in the country,'' the Pontiff said.
"What they want is to participate actively in life with the opportunity
to speak their mind with respect and tolerance,'' he said in a homily at the
hospital's chapel, during which he blessed leprosy and AIDS patients. The
Vatican has passed on to Cuban authorities requests for clemency from an unknown
number of prisoners, some of them political. But there has been no public
response so far.
The Pope urged those imprisoned "for ideas which though dissident are
nonetheless peaceful'' not to succumb to "pessimism or discouragement.''
Cuban human rights activists say that although the number has halved over
the last year there are still around 500 political prisoners in Cuba.
Earlier, during a Mass in the eastern city of Santiago, a local archbishop
openly attacked the government, warning against "false Messiahs,'' as the
Pontiff and the regime's second most powerful figure, Raul Castro, looked on.
The Pope, speaking under the scorching Santiago sun, said at the Mass that
the government must give the Church more freedom.
The Church did not seek political power but needed "sufficient freedom
and adequate means'' to spread its message, he said.
In welcoming words to the Pontiff at the biggest Mass so far of his historic
five-day visit to the island, Archbishop Pedro Meurice said that after President
Fidel Castro's 1959 revolution, the Church was "impoverished'' by an "ideological
confrontation with Marxist-Leninism intentionally induced by the government.''
"Many Cubans confuse the nation with a sole (political) party,'' he
added.
This struck at the heart of government thinking, which draws an unbreakable
link between communism and patriotism, brooking no dissent and suggesting that
nationalism is identical to support for the one-party system.
Meurice added, in what many may have taken as a reference to Fidel Castro: "Our
people is respectful of authority and likes order, but needs to learn to
demythologize false Messianism.''
The archbishop's public comments were more surprising because Castro had
dispatched his younger brother and designated successor, vice-president Raul
Castro, to the Mass.
The 100,000-strong crowd at the service, held in the city that is the cradle
of Fidel Castro's revolution, frequently and enthusiastically applauded the
archbishop.
Calling in his homily for freedom of expression and association, the Pope
said true freedom "includes the recognition of human rights and social
justice,'' adding that Catholics had the right to participate in public debate "on
the basis of equality.''
After a short service in the leprosy hospital chapel, the Pope moved among
about white-robed patients from there and a nearby AIDS clinic. A choir of young
girls, almost all of them weeping, sang as he touched and blessed the patients.
At the end of the Mass earlier in Santiago, John Paul crowned the Virgin of
Charity of El Cobre, the island's most important religious icon.
The Virgin is venerated by most Cubans, even atheist supporters of the
communist government. His hands shaking slightly, the frail Pontiff placed a
small crown on the infant Christ and a larger one on the head of the Virgin.
The small wooden effigy of the Madonna and Child is said to have been found
floating on a board at sea by three fishermen in 1606. Legend says her dress was
miraculously dry.
The Virgin's shrine at El Cobre, a copper mine 12 miles (19 kms) outside
Santiago, is Cuba's most sacred pilgrimage site, where people go to ask for her
help in times of distress.
Castro's own mother, Lina Ruz, pleaded with the Virgin to protect her son's
life when he was fighting as a guerrilla in the nearby Sierra Maestra mountains
in the late 1950s.
The Pope crowned the Virgin in the same city where Castro's revolution was
born in a hail of gunfire in 1953 with a brazen but abortive attack on the local
army barracks.
Some 40 Cuban exiles on Saturday said prayers and dropped flowers and
wreaths from a boat in international waters about 12 miles (20 km) off the
Havana coast in memory of "the thousands of victims'' of Castro's
government, the exile group Democracy Movement said.
REUTERS
20:36 01-24-98 |