“Compassion for Poor Cuba”

TEXT OF THE TELEGRAM OF THE TFP'S TO JOHN PAUL II ON CUBA

The drama of the ten thousand Cubans who have flocked into the Embassy of Peru in Havana seeking asylum, does not express only the personal anguish of each one of them, a result of the misery and oppression in which they feel submerged. The spasms and moral convulsions shaking them, equally disturb the whole population, tortured in body and soul under the whip of an atheistic and inhuman regime. Personified in the ten thousand refugees — among whom are found the ill, the aged, and children of the most tender age — the whole Cuban people stand up before the world, as though saying: Behold, from the sole of the foot unto the top of the head, there is no sound spot in me. (Is 1:6).

This mute and harrowing cry of pain has certainly given rise to some categorical protests and some efforts to help the refugees. Consequently, in spite of the cold and disconcerting political and bureaucratic delays, one may expect that the personal situations of all these unfortunate refugees will be finally resolved in conformance with Natural Law and Christian charity.

This, however, will by no means resolve the overall situation of the noble and unfortunate Cuban people, who, unless they are helped urgently and efficaciously, will slide from misfortune to misfortune. In this way one must fear that, before long, they will once again turn to the contemporary world to stigmatize it as egoistic, pragmatic, and vilely cowardly in the face of problems it does not know how to resolve and duties it does not want to fulfill. "Behold" — they will say — "we are worms, not men; we are the scorn of men, the outcast of nations," as King David textually speaks of the Divine Redeemer (Ps. 21:7).

Indeed, Most Holy Father, if the Christian fibers of old still vibrated in the spirit of present-day man, the world-wide compassion for the victims and the indignation of all nations against the torturers would have stirred up one of those hurricanes of holy wrath which neither the power of gold and weapons nor even the most wilily disguised and contrived political plots can resist.

But to our shame, the sense of justice and dignity no longer has the strength to bring about such regenerating and irresistible winds.

In the face of the Cuban drama, only the words of Your Holiness have the necessary conditions to wake up dormant Christian energies in the whole world. Throughout the Earth, Holy Father, united to the Cuban people, their brothers in the Faith, are those who, in desolation, silence, and prayer, await those words.

The Societies for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property and similar entities, all of them autonomous in relation to one another, acting in the civil sphere and inspired by the traditional teachings of Holy Church, genuflect before Your Holiness. And in consonance with the feelings certainly going through the souls of all Catholic Cubans, implore Your Holiness to address the world expressing Your pastoral compassion for poor Cuba, the victim of the most sinister tyranny ever to exist on the vast American continent.

In union of soul with these Cubans muted by brutal terror, we raise our eyes to the throne of Saint Peter and implore Your Holiness: Lord, save them, for they are perishing (Matt. 8:25).

For them and for us we implore the apostolic blessing.

(“Crusade for a Christian Civilization”, Volume 10, Number 2, April-June 1980)