News and Letters March 1998

Column: Our Life and Times

by Kevin A. Barry and Mary Holmes

Pope in Cuba

When Pope John Paul II took his reactionary message to Cuba in January, he was visiting the last remaining, nominally "Catholic" stronghold which still adheres to state-capitalism calling itself Communism. The Pope's message wasn't new in terms of anti-abortion and pro-patriarchal "family values," curbing the "excesses" of globalized capitalism, and returning to the "true faith."

The Pope did endorse lifting the 37-year-old U.S. economic embargo on Cuba, although he did this in an indirect general fashion by stating his opposition to all "unjust" economic embargoes. For his part, Castro embraced the opportunity to share the world spotlight with this Pope.

Whatever Castro's opportunistic motives, we should remember that this Pope functioned as the supreme power in the church hierarchy whose "officials" often abetted, directly and by inaction, the repression of opposition in Latin America. The greatest toll was not among guerrilla focos, but among the popular oppositions, including Catholic priests, nuns and laypersons.

It is instructive to revisit what Raya Dunayevskaya wrote, in part, about the current Pope, shortly after his election (November 1978 NEWS & LETTERS):

"With the election of Pope John Paul II, the Vatican has again plunged deeply into its professional anti- Communism, this time aimed not just at Russia but more specifically and directly against the Latin American liberation movement.

"It is there where there is an ongoing Catholic-Marxist dialogue-and I do mean Marxist and not just state-capitalists calling themselves that. It's in Latin America where oppression by the totalitarian, militarist, reactionary, capitalist regimes has made life so nearly impossible for the masses, that a great schism has been produced within the church and some of the clergymen have been led to side with the liberationist movement. What more "brilliant" move on the part of the Vatican than the choice of Cardinal Wojtyla as Pope, a man as adept as the totalitarian Communists in the country in which he lives in using libertarian, sometimes even "Marxist" language, to cover up capitalist exploitation."