May God’s blessings come to Cuba’s long suffering ‘dissidents’

Special blessings on the Cuban “dissidents” forbidden to be in the presence of Pope Francis. Photos of the dissidents, roughly manhandled by security and sent world wide, finally transcend the one of Fidel Castro’s executioner Che Guevara that for more than half a century has literally dominated Havana’s Revolution Square. Even though when caught in the end, Guevara, whose “stock in trade was the mass-murder of defenseless men and boys--bound and gagged”, whimpered "Don’t Shoot! I’m Che! I’m worth more to you alive than dead!", (Canada Free Press) his image today seen everywhere on T-shirts; is kept alive on countless college campuses and was even proudly displayed at a Texas campaign office during the 2008 Barack Obama presidential campaign.

There is no possible denying that Guevara was both a brutal killer and a sniveling coward. In transcending the Guevara image, Cuban dissidents kept from the pope’s heralded presence in their country are proof positive that it is they and not the murderous Guevara who are the ongoing revolutionary heroes, against all odds. In inviting well-known leading dissidents, Marta Beatriz Roque and Miriam Leiva to attend a vesper service led by the pope in Havana’s historic baroque cathredal and not seeing to it that they got in, and not saying how sorry they were that the dissidents were banned, the Vatican pulled a Pontius Pilate. "They told me that I didn't have a credential and that I couldn't go to the Pope’s event that was taking place there in the plaza of the Cathedral," Ms Roque said. (Telegraph.co.uk, Sept. 21, 2015)

“She said that she and Ms Leiva had also been invited by the Vatican to meet Pope Francis at the residence of the Holy See’s ambassador to Cuba shortly after the pontiff's arrival on Saturday, but that they were detained on that occasion as well. “The head of an opposition group called the Ladies in White said that 22 of the 24 members of the group who had hoped to attend a Mass celebrated by the Pope were prevented from doing so by Cuban security officials. "

---

At least one dissident shown in a photo was even prevented from approaching the popemobile.  What good is kissing babies held up to the popemobile by their doting parents, if the authorities are allowed to kiss off people of faith branded as dissidents? “The fact that the Vatican invited the women to Sunday’s cathedral service showed Francis’ determination to try to engage with the dissident movement, which has endured years of persecution by the Castro regime.” (Telegraph.co.uk)  What kind of determination peters out when it doesn’t go all the way to inclusion of dissidents at the Cathedral? Earlier in the day, the Pope had celebrated Mass in Havana’s Revolution Square in front of tens of thousands of people--but not for any of those qualifying as dissidents. With the Communist Cuban regime now recognized as friends by both the pope and Obama, the dissidents which have continued to endure the most vile form of persecution for years, are being shown no mercy. Cuban dissidents are not your usual malcontents like the ones who take to the streets in OWS (Occupy Wall Street) rent a mob. They brave all to have their country released from the stranglehold of communism. “Ernesto "Che" Guevara was second in command, chief executioner, and chief KGB liaison for a regime that outlawed elections and private property. This regime’s KGB-supervised police – employing the midnight knock and the dawn raid among other devices – rounded up and jailed more political prisoners as a percentage of population than Stalin’s and executed more people (out of a population of 6.4 million) in its first three years in power than Hitler’s executed (out of a population of 70 million) in its first six. (Canada Free Press) “Political opponents of President Raul Castro’s Communist regime are regularly subjected to harassment and intimidation. (Telegraph.co.uk)

“In its latest report on Cuba, Human Rights Watch said that the Castro government “continues to repress dissent and discourage public criticism.” 

Today the pope and the Castro brothers dominate the news, while in hundreds of dark prison cells throughout still Communist Cuba, political prisoners, who are all but ignored by world leaders including their own, send up fervent prayers to their Creator. Forlorn and forgotten as they are in the politics and pretend piousness of the day, we should send up a collective prayer that their prayers will soon be answered. Meanwhile, it is not the end of the US embargo that Pope Francis and Obama co-authored that should matter the most, but the freedom of all of Cuba’s suppressed people.