Catholics in secular Cuba hail Francis as 'bridge'
Catholics and others in secular Cuba have been paying tribute to Pope Francis, praising in particular his efforts to reconcile the communist island with its powerful neighbor, the United States.
The country, which was officially atheist for three decades, declared three days of mourning for the pontiff, and Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel attended a special mass at Havana's cathedral Thursday.
Ex-president Raul Castro -- brother of revolutionary leader Fidel, who had initially cracked down on religion -- sent a message of condolences calling Francis a "man of integrity."
The Catholic Church's first Latin American pope played a special role in Cuban history, negotiating a resumption of diplomatic relations with Washington under president Barack Obama in 2015, after decades of Cold War estrangement.
He became the third pope to visit the island, once in both 2015 and 2016.
The Communist Party of Cuba declared the state secular, no longer atheist, in 1992, allowing for greater religious freedom.
Havana's cathedral, which normally draws only a trickle of worshippers, was packed Thursday to bid a final farewell to Francis.
The pontiff, who died Monday aged 88, "fostered dialogue, especially between Cuba and the United States, which was very difficult," said 75-year-old Osvaldo Ferreira, a cathedral custodian.
The pope, added 24-year-old doctor Rayneris Lopez, was "like a bridge" between Cuba and the United States.
- Pope 'loved this country' -
The detente that Francis helped foster has suffered setbacks since Obama left office in 2017.
Obama's successor Donald Trump severed ties with Havana during his first term, and toughened sanctions now in place for over 60 years.
In 2022, the administration of Joe Biden added Cuba to a religious freedom blacklist, pointing to arrests of religious figures over their purported role in rare public protests, as well as restrictions on certain churches.
Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez at the time rejected the accusation saying: "It is known that in Cuba there is religious freedom."
In one of his final official acts, Biden on January 14 removed Cuba from a US list of state terror sponsors in return for the communist island agreeing to free 553 prisoners in a deal also mediated by the Vatican.
But six days later marked the swearing-in of Trump for a second term. He swiftly overturned the deal.
Havana claims it has released all 553 people subject to the deal with Biden, including 231 considered "political prisoners" by rights groups.
Most of the 231 had been rounded up in a crackdown on mass protests against the Cuban government in July 2021.
During his homily on Thursday, the Holy See's envoy to Cuba Antoine Camilleri recalled the late pontiff had "loved this country, the Cuban church, and the Cuban people very much."
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
TimesLIVE
4 days ago
- TimesLIVE
USAID cuts threaten ‘God's food' made in Georgia for children in need
Reaching into one of the giant white sacks piled up in his Georgia food-processing plant, Mark Moore pulls out a fistful of shelled peanuts, what he calls 'God's food', and lets them roll through his fingers. A former evangelical missionary, Moore is co-founder of Mana Nutrition, a US nonprofit that said it has fed 10-million children across the globe since 2010 with packets of peanut butter paste made in the small farming community of Fitzgerald, about 290km south of Atlanta. 'This saves children,' said Moore, 58, clutching a bunch of the protein-rich legumes. 'It's not an overstatement: We defeat death.' Mana is in the midst of its own struggle for survival. Deep cuts in federal programmes targeting international aid programmes under President Donald Trump have threatened to choke the financial lifeline that has allowed the nonprofit to carry out its life-saving mission. Since January, the US Agency for International Development (USAID), created during the height of the Cold War by then-President John F Kennedy, has been dismantled by the department of government efficiency, Trump's cost-cutting entity led until recently by billionaire Elon Musk. In announcing the termination of its contracts, which accounted for about 90% of Mana's $100m (R1.7bn) annual budget, the department of government efficiency sent a letter to the nonprofit saying its work was 'not aligned with agency priorities'. Efforts to reach a spokesperson for the state department, which oversees USAID, have been unsuccessful. In two terse letters sent to Mana and reviewed by Reuters, USAID offered no specific reasons for the terminations other than to say the work 'was not in the national interest'. Mana has enough money to keep running through to August at the most, Moore said, but he seemed unshakeable in his optimism about the future of its mission.
IOL News
4 days ago
- IOL News
Trump-Musk showdown threatens US space plans
Elon Musk says his time as a Special Government Employee comes to an end. Image: Brandon Bell / Getty Images via AFP SpaceX's rockets ferry US astronauts to the International Space Station. Its Starlink satellite constellation blankets the globe with broadband, and the company is embedded in some of the Pentagon's most sensitive projects, including tracking hypersonic missiles. So when President Donald Trump threatened on Thursday to cancel Elon Musk's federal contracts, space watchers snapped to attention. Musk, the world's richest person, shot back that he would mothball Dragon -- the capsule NASA relies on for crew flights -- before retracting the threat a few hours later. For now, experts say mutual dependence should keep a full-blown rupture at bay, but the episode exposes just how disruptive any break could be. Founded in 2002, SpaceX leapfrogged legacy contractors to become the world's dominant launch provider. Driven by Musk's ambition to make humanity multiplanetary, it is now NASA's sole means of sending astronauts to the ISS -- a symbol of post–Cold War cooperation and a testbed for deeper space missions. Video Player is loading. Play Video Play Unmute Current Time 0:00 / Duration -:- Loaded : 0% Stream Type LIVE Seek to live, currently behind live LIVE Remaining Time - 0:00 This is a modal window. Beginning of dialog window. Escape will cancel and close the window. Text Color White Black Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Opaque Semi-Transparent Background Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Opaque Semi-Transparent Transparent Window Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Transparent Semi-Transparent Opaque Font Size 50% 75% 100% 125% 150% 175% 200% 300% 400% Text Edge Style None Raised Depressed Uniform Dropshadow Font Family Proportional Sans-Serif Monospace Sans-Serif Proportional Serif Monospace Serif Casual Script Small Caps Reset restore all settings to the default values Done Close Modal Dialog End of dialog window. Advertisement Next Stay Close ✕ Ad Loading Space monopoly? The company has completed 10 regular crew rotations to the orbiting lab and is contracted for four more, under a deal worth nearly $5 billion. That's just part of a broader portfolio that includes $4 billion from NASA for developing Starship, the next-generation megarocket; nearly $6 billion from the Space Force for launch services; and a reported $1.8 billion for Starshield, a classified spy satellite network. Were Dragon grounded, the United States would again be forced to rely on Russian Soyuz rockets for ISS access -- as it did between 2011 and 2020, following the Space Shuttle's retirement and before Crew Dragon entered service. "Under the current geopolitical climate, that would not be optimal," space analyst Laura Forczyk told AFP. NASA had hoped Boeing's Starliner would provide redundancy, but persistent delays -- and a failed crewed test last year -- have kept it grounded. Even Northrop Grumman's cargo missions now rely on SpaceX's Falcon 9, the workhorse of its rocket fleet. The situation also casts a shadow over NASA's Artemis program. A lunar lander variant of Starship is slated for Artemis III and IV, the next US crewed Moon missions. If Starship were sidelined, rival Blue Origin could benefit -- but the timeline would almost certainly slip, giving China, which aims to land humans by 2030, a chance to get there first, Forczyk warned. "There are very few launch vehicles as capable as Falcon 9 -- it isn't feasible to walk away as easily as President Trump might assume," she said. NASA meanwhile appeared eager to show that it had options. "NASA is assessing the earliest potential for a Starliner flight to the International Space Station in early 2026, pending system certification and resolution of Starliner's technical issues," the agency said in a statement Friday to AFP. Still, the feud could sour Trump on space altogether, Forczyk cautioned, complicating NASA's long-term plans. SpaceX isn't entirely dependent on the US government. Starlink subscriptions and commercial launches account for a significant share of its revenue, and the company also flies private missions. The next, with partner Axiom Space, will carry astronauts from India, Poland, and Hungary, funded by their respective governments. Private power, public risk But losing US government contracts would still be a major blow. "It's such a doomsday scenario for both parties that it's hard to envision how US space efforts would fill the gap," Clayton Swope, deputy director of the Aerospace Security Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told AFP. "Both sides have every reason to bridge the disagreement and get back to business." Signs of a rift emerged last weekend, when the White House abruptly withdrew its nomination of e-payments billionaire Jared Isaacman -- a close Musk ally who has twice flown to space with SpaceX -- as NASA administrator. On a recent podcast, Isaacman said he believed he was dropped because "some people had some axes to grind, and I was a good, visible target." The broader episode could also reignite debate over Washington's reliance on commercial partners, particularly when one company holds such a dominant position. Swope noted that while the US government has long favored buying services from industry, military leaders tend to prefer owning the systems they depend on. "This is just another data point that might bolster the case for why it can be risky," he said. "I think that seed has been planted in a lot of people's minds -- that it might not be worth the trust."
eNCA
05-06-2025
- eNCA
Indigenous rights defender elected head of top Mexican court
Hugo Aguilar, an Indigenous rights defender and former advisor to Mexico's Zapatista guerrilla movement, won election to become the head of the country's Supreme Court, official results showed Thursday. The change in the key post, long reserved for elite jurists, follows unprecedented elections on Sunday in which Mexico became the first country in the world to choose judges at all levels at the ballot box. Aguilar, a constitutional law specialist and member of the Indigenous group Mixtec, is now one of the highest profile Indigenous leaders in Latin America. During his campaign, he proclaimed "it's our turn" and denounced the "exclusion and abandonment" of native peoples. Around 20 percent of Mexicans identify as Indigenous. Aguilar was a legal advisor to the now demobilized Zapatistas during negotiations with the government following an armed uprising in 1994. He has said Mexico's Indigenous peoples are owed a "a significant debt." Aguilar worked at the National Institute of Indigenous Peoples under President Claudia Sheinbaum's predecessor and mentor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador -- both of whom have criticized what they say is the elite's grip on the judiciary. The trailblazing judicial elections have been controversial in the Latin American nation. The overhaul was initiated by Lopez Obrador, who frequently clashed with the Supreme Court over whether his policy changes were unconstitutional Despite confusion and low turnout -- with only about 13 percent of eligible voters participating -- Sheinbaum declared the election a success. Her opponents, however, branded it a "farce" and warned it would consolidate the ruling party's power, as it already dominates both houses of Congress. The majority of Mexico's Supreme Court justices quit over the judicial reforms last year and declined to stand for election. Aguilar follows in the footsteps of Benito Juarez, Mexico's first Indigenous president who also led the Supreme Court from 1857 to 1858.
