For the second year in a row, Cuba’s communist government has declared Good Friday a national holiday. The gesture came days after President Raul Castro welcomed the appointment of Pope Francis as the first-ever Latin American pontiff. Last year the Cuban government observed a holiday on Good Friday as an “exceptional” gesture following a request Read more
Posts Tagged ‘Cuba’
Cuban church: Ladies in White they are now a political group
Monday, May 28th, 2012A Cuban Catholic Church official told the Ladies in White on Friday they are no longer a humanitarian group and that the government is unlikely to let them go to the Vatican even if Pope Benedict XVI grants them an audience, spokeswoman Berta Soler said. The lay spokesman for Cardinal Jaime Ortega, meanwhile, told a Read more
More than 1,100 Cubans reported detained during papal visit
Thursday, April 19th, 2012Cuban police carried out 1,158 political detentions in March – mostly to keep dissidents away from Pope Benedict XVI – the most since the mass roundups during the Bay of Pigs invasion five decades ago, a human rights group reported Tuesday. The report by the Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation in Havana Read more
What Pope Benedict got wrong in Cuba
Tuesday, April 17th, 2012
When Pope Benedict XVI travelled to Cuba two weeks ago, he was acting within a long tradition. Popes, after all, are not only spiritual leaders, they are representatives of the oldest continuous absolute monarchy in the world, which traces back to the Apostle Peter two millennia ago: The Holy See has been engaging in diplomacy Read more
Cuba: New wave of repression
Friday, April 13th, 2012
Four days after Pope Benedict left Cuba, 43 dissidents have been detained in Cuba in a new wave of repression. Former political prisoner Jose Daniel Ferrer and his wife, Belkis Cantillo, a member of the Women in White, were among those arrested. “We have been able to confirm that 43 dissidents have been detained – Read more
Cuba: Good Friday holiday – few attend Church
Tuesday, April 10th, 2012
As bells rang throughout Havana, Cuba, on Good Friday, only around 100 attended the city’s main cathedral where Cardinal Jamie Ortega presided at the ceremony. Authorities also allowed Cardinal Jamie Ortega to transmit the Good Friday service on State Television. It is the first time in 50 years Cubans were granted a public holiday on Read more
Benedict XVI and the lament of the hawks
Tuesday, April 10th, 2012
Three decades ago, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger rose to fame as the architect of the Vatican’s crackdown on liberation theology in Latin America, which he saw as a dangerous baptism of Marxist class struggle. That stance made Ratzinger a hero to anti-communist stalwarts everywhere, the perfect intellectual complement to John Paul II’s muscular challenge to the Read more
Cuba reponds: Good Friday a one-time holiday
Tuesday, April 3rd, 2012
Cuba has responded to Pope Benedict’s visit by announcing that this coming Good Friday will become a ‘one-time’ national holiday. Minutes before Benedict departed from Cuba on March 28, President Raul Castro told the Pope of his desire to declare Friday, April 6 a holiday “as an exception, and in consideration to His Holiness and Read more
Cuba dissident identifies papal Mass protester
Tuesday, April 3rd, 2012A leading Cuban dissident has identified the mystery man who yelled anti-government slogans just before a Mass celebrated by Pope Benedict XVI this week before being hustled away by security agents.
Jose Daniel Ferrer told The Associated Press that the protester’s name is Andres Carrion Alvarez, and identified him as a 38-year-old resident of the eastern city of Santiago de Cuba. Ferrer said the man was still in custody Friday.
The protester shouted “Down with the Revolution! Down with the dictatorship!” near journalists at the Mass at Santiago’s crowded Revolution Plaza on Monday. Video of the incident showed him being hit by an apparent first-aid worker wearing a white T-shirt with a large red cross, before they were separated. Security agents quickly took him away.
Read the article...Benedict asks that Cuba recognise Good Friday as holiday
Friday, March 30th, 2012
At a 40 minute personal meeting between Cuban president Raul Castro and Pope Benedict, the Holy Father asked for Cuba to recognise Good Friday as a holiday. Noting that John Paul II asked a similar request of Fidel Castro about Christmas and it was restored as a national holiday, Vatican Spokesman Fr Federico Lombardi SJ said, Read more
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