Pope Francis Calls for Another Revolution in Cuba – of ‘Tenderness’

Pope Francis has faced criticism for refusing to meet with human rights activists in Cuba, and has been accused of largely ignoring the issue of human rights during his visit. Although he telephoned some dissidents on Sunday to give a “passing greeting”, they were disappointed that he held no meeting with them but chose to spend half an hour with Cuba’s former revolutionary dictator, Fidel Castro.

Pope Francis is hugely popular here in Cuba, because of his gentle and direct manner in expressing the Catholic faith and especially because, as a fellow Latin American, he is perceived as someone who can truly relate to the people of this isolated island.

Many people inside and outside Cuba hope that normalized U.S.-Cuban relations will lead to greater communication, trade and exchanges between the two countries.

He has pleaded for peace between government troops and insurgents in Colombia, helped thaw the long-frozen relationship between the United States and Cuba and demanded that European nations accept more refugees and migrants fleeing the Middle East and North Africa. “The Pope has certainly given a great message of hope, despite the difficulties”.

In this photo taken Tuesday, September 22, 2015, Pope Francis talks with Cuba’s President Raul Castro during his farewell ceremony at the airport in Santiago, Cuba.

Members of the group said they had been invited by Vatican officials to attend the pope’s mass at the Plaza of the Revolution in Havana, but were arrested before they could get there.

In the afternoon, the Pope visited Fidel Castro in his home.

“Wealth impoverishes us, in a bad way”, he said. The ladies say they sat on the floor with their backs to the television for the duration of the Mass. He warned against the throwaway culture that destroys hope and how young people “are thrown away because they are not given work”.

It is unlikely that either of them would be able to convince the other regarding their world view, but the mere fact that they are prepared to listen to each other and share their views and perspectives on religion and world affairs is itself worthy of commendation. Although he said their ideology was flat-out wrong, it did not prevent him from identifying and admiring what was good in them.

Here the Pope emphasised hope as a vital factor in helping young Cubans, perhaps made cynical by years of ideological oppression, to create a better future together for their nation. What Cuba requires, said Pope Francis during a homily in Havana, is for leaders to abandon a type of service that is self-serving and founded on ideology.

Once an atheist state, how did communist Cuba go from seeing religion as the opiate of the masses to celebrating mass at Revolution Plaza? He reminded his audience that the family is the “domestic Church”.

Before leaving Cuba the Pope thanked the country’s people for their hospitality, saying that he felt a “warmth spread by people who know how to welcome”.