Cardinal Bertono Returns to Cuba

Cardinal Bertono Returns to Cuba
Posted: 12/12/2014 3:18 am

14ymedio, Yoani Sanchez, Havana, 12 December 2014 -- Six years ago
Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone came through the front door to Cuba. This
December, however, he has returned on a private visit which is evidence
of the discrete recognition of failure. For the former Vatican Foreign
Minister, the time between one stay and another has been filled with
missteps. This is a man who returns in disgrace. Just like what has
happened with the "Raul reforms" that he validated with his presence.

Cardinal Bertone has arrived on the Island to mark the Feast of the
Immaculate Conception of Mary, but on this occasion, far from the
cameras and the presidential palace. The man who helped to coordinate
the visit of Pope Benedict XVI to our country, has participated this
week in the consecration in Santa Clara of a sanctuary to the Virgin of
Charity del Cobre, Cuba's patron saint.

Now, he prefers the ecclesiastical circles and has returned to the Cobre
Sanctuary, where he said mass. The context today is very different from
his previous stay, a few days after the installation of Raul Castro as
president, which the prelate described as a "special, extraordinary
moment." In that February, he also asserted that the General "will
continue (...) with a vision, if at all possible, of development."
However, the reality on display this December is stubbornly to the contrary.

The Cuba he is returning to is far from the hopes that some sheltered
with the coming to power of Fidel Castro's brother. Part of the Cuban
population imagined the possibilities of an economic and political
opening. However, the economic flexibilities ended up untying some knots
only to tie others, and civil liberties never arrived.

Six years ago, Bertone said that he would have a conversation with
"clarity, sincerity, an exchange," with the new president, but the
president seems not to have listened. The price paid by the former
Vatican Foreign Minister for this family photo with the Government was
high. While officialdom protected him, the most critical sector of the
Catholic Church doesn't look kindly on that embrace between the sickle
and the cross. Excluding the dissidents from any possible dialog with
the Cardinal, also signaled the bias of his point of view.

Accustomed to moving influences and cooking up agreements, the Vatican
number two thought he could unstick the wheels of change. He met with
Cuba's Foreign Minister, Felipe Perez Roque, who a few weeks later would
be ousted and accused by Fidel Castro himself of having become addicted
to "the honey of power." Those faces that once welcomed him with smiles,
today are no longer here or are in hiding.

Bertone, who was also the Secretary of the Sacred Congregation for the
Doctrine of the Faith (the Holy Office), came six years ago to teach at
a conference in the Main Hall of the University of Havana. Even the
newspaper Granma had something of the odor of incense in those days and
published a communication from the Cuban bishops, in which they called
on Raul Castro to take "transcendental measures" to satisfy the
"anxieties and concerns expressed by Cubans."

Bertone already saw his name in the history of Cuba. The mass that he
celebrated in Havana Cathedral focused on the search for larger spaces
for the Church within Cuba. In exchange for the ability to gain this
space, he accepted all the concessions required. He adopted the official
discourse against the "American blockade," he didn't meet with regime
opponents, and he validated the flexibilizations offered by power as the
path to the dreamed of country.

Today, Bertone is not who he was... nor is Cuba what he predicted. Said
to have mismanaged influence, now separated from the epicenter of
Vatican power, and touched by the scandal of the letters revealed by
Benedict XVI's butler, the man who has come to this Island is a shadow.
But the Raul regime reforms are also shadows. Economic relaxations that
haven't managed, after more than five years since they began, to allow
Cubans to live in dignity, nor have they provided larger spaces of freedom.

Chance or destiny - who knows? - this time the Bertone's mass at El
Cobre coincides with International Human Rights Day. A few kilometers
from the sanctuary where he addressed the congregation, dozens of
activists have been confined to their homes, threatened, and some of
them have been arrested to prevent their participating in events planned
to celebrate this date. The Cuba he did not want to see on his previous
trip is knocking on the door with a call that combines desperation and
reproach.

Source: Cardinal Bertono Returns to Cuba | Yoani Sanchez -
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/yoani-sanchez/cardinal-bertono-returns_b_6313322.html