American bishops' visit aims to speed Cuba-U.S. thaw

American bishops' visit aims to speed Cuba-U.S. thaw
Mon Aug 17, 2009 6:29pm EDT
By Esteban Israel

HAVANA (Reuters) - U.S. Catholic bishops think U.S. President Barack
Obama needs to move more quickly to patch up long-bitter relations with
Cuba and they hope to speed things up with a visit to the communist
island this week.

A delegation led by Boston's Cardinal Sean O'Malley arrived in Cuba on
Monday, where they will meet with church leaders.

They will also look over reconstruction work to repair damage caused by
three hurricanes last year, said Father Andrew Small, director of the
U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' Collection for the Church in Latin
America.

But the main purpose of their five-day trip is to send a message to the
White House that it must move more quickly to improve U.S.-Cuba relations.

"Isolation doesn't help change. There has to be greater contact. And the
Obama administration has been, unfortunately, encouraging but painfully
slow," Small said.

"We need some radical changes, particularly from the U.S. perspective,"
he told Reuters in the courtyard of a Havana church.

Cuba and the United States have been at odds since the 1959 revolution
that put Fidel Castro in power and eventually turned the island just 90
miles off the Florida coast into a communist state.

The political atmosphere has warmed under Obama, who has said he wants
to "recast" U.S.-Cuban relations. He has taken small steps in that
direction by slightly easing the 47-year-old U.S. trade embargo against
the island.

But he has said further changes will depend on Cuba releasing political
prisoners and making progress on human rights.

Cuba has said it is willing to discuss all issues, but that it will not
make unilateral concessions to the U.S.

'UNFREEZE RELATIONSHIPS'

The U.S. Catholic bishops support ending the embargo, imposed since 1962
to undermine Cuba's communist government, and also the lifting of a
travel ban on Americans wanting to visit the island, Small said.

"We are here very much showing our care and concern (to the Cuban
Church). But we will be taking those messages back to those who in some
sense are preventing greater openness and greater dialogue," Small said.

"I think to the extent that we can be a bridge between those who
historically have not been able to talk to each other, we can unfreeze
some of those relationships," he said.

Many Cubans are nominally Catholic in a country where relations between
church and state have been tense for years, but have improved in the
last decade.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops donated $850,000 for the
rebuilding of churches and parishes damaged by hurricanes Gustav, Ike
and Paloma in 2008.

The U.S. delegation includes bishop Thomas Wenski of Orlando, Florida
and auxiliary bishop Oscar Cantu of San Antonio, Texas.

Their trip follows an unpublicized visit in June by Timothy Broglio,
archbishop for the U.S. military, who went to the U.S. naval base in
Guantanamo, then met with church leaders in several Cuban cities.

(Editing by Jeff Franks and Anthony Boadle)

American bishops' visit aims to speed Cuba-U.S. thaw | U.S. | Reuters
(17 August 2009)
http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSTRE57G5EK20090817?sp=true