Ahead of Pope Benedict’s visit to Cuba next week, Lech Walesa, the former Polish President has written to Benedict urging him to take up the defense of Cubans demanding freedom.
“I beg Your Holiness to intercede for those who are in prison because of their convictions,” wrote Walesa, a former dissident who headed the Solidarity labor movement that helped oust Poland’s communist government.
“I implore Your Holiness to take up the defense of those Cubans who are demanding freedom at the risk of persecutions and humiliation,” he added in the letter, dated March 8 and made public Monday by the Lech Walesa Institute in Warsaw.
Drawing a parallel between Cuba and Poland, Walesa recalled the powerful impact of John Paul II’s visit to Poland in 1979, a similarly strong Catholic nation under communist rule.
The visit “not only awakened in us, the Polish people, the hope of change but above all freed our will to take action,” he wrote.
“I have no doubt that without the words of the pope, without his presence, the birth of Solidarity would not have been possible,” Walesa wrote to Benedict.
Source
- Boston Herald
- Image: News from Poland