Max J. Castro. Published Tuesday, December 25, 2001 in
The Miami Herald
For the past few days, this community has been mourning the death on
Thursday of Monsignor Bryan O. Walsh.
On this Christmas day, I want to take time, instead, to celebrate his life
beyond the headlines encapsulating him as the Pedro Pan priest.
I met Walsh and grew to like, respect and admire him tremendously long after
Pedro Pan. No doubt history will identify him with the Catholic-run operation
that would eventually arrange the exit from Cuba of 14,000 children during the
early days of the Cuban revolution.
Yet, regardless of the merits or shortcomings of the Pedro Pan program, it
would be a shame if Walsh's legacy were reduced to a single episode in the long
Cold War pitting Cuban exiles and the United States against Fidel Castro. Walsh
had a long, rich life post-Pedro Pan, and that legacy is as important to this
community as are the contributions of those he helped to come here.
With a ready smile, a keen sense of humor and irony and utterly lacking the
sense of self-importance or self-righteousness that so often mars people with a
mission, Walsh nevertheless was passionately engaged in the causes in which he
believed.
And what causes they were! He "imitated Jesus's own option for the
poor, the needy and the outcast,'' said Miami Archbishop John C. Favarola. Walsh
did this in myriad ways, including his leadership of Catholic Relief Services
and the Community Relations Board and his special, enduring advocacy for the
rights of immigrants.
Yet Monsignor's -- virtually everyone called him that -- contributions to
life in Miami transcend any of these specific achievements.
In a city so starkly, often painfully divided between the rich and the poor,
blacks and whites, immigrants and natives, Latinos and Anglos, anti-Castro
hardliners and advocates of dialogue, Walsh was that unique person who stood far
above the fray and commanded the respect of all.
Will anyone ever again fill his plain, priestly shoes?
Because of Pedro Pan, Walsh will always have a special place in the hearts
of Cuban Americans; gratitude is one of our most becoming virtues. Yet, unlike
others, the monsignor achieved the love and the admiration of so many people
without pandering or bending his principles.
When I learned of his death, I went to share my grief with Maria Cristina
Herrera, a professor at Miami-Dade Community College and a good friend of
Walsh's. Herrera, a devoted Catholic, founder and guiding light of the Instituto
de Estudios Cubanos, advocate of dialogue, once the target of a bomb and still
controversial, was disconsolate.
Through her tears she reminded me that Walsh had always stood by her, even
when she was a virtual pariah in some circles and had participated in the
Instituto's events when others had boycotted them.
Walsh's most enduring legacy is an ethic of reconciliation. He supported the
Cuban Catholic Church in its quest for reconciliation. And in a book published
in 1999 by Sweden's Olof Palme Center, Walsh wrote about the ethical and
religious implications of the U.S. embargo on Cuba. In brief but philosophically
coherent fashion, he laid out the arguments that led the Vatican to decide that
"the embargo is a violation of international morality as interpreted by the
social teachings of the Church.''
About his own view of the embargo, he wrote: "Nothing good has been
achieved that can compare with the suffering of the Cuban people.'' Instead, the
policy gives the impression that, "by turning the screws against the Cuban
people, in a pressure-cooker environment, there will be an explosion against the
Castro regime.''
And if that is the intention, he wrote, it "is clearly immoral from any
level of human decency from which it is judged.''
maxcastro@miami.edu
Copyright 2001 Miami Herald | 
