Originally published at National Catholic Register
COMMENTARY: If the Cuban dictator read the first 21 pages of Introduction to Christianity he could have found Pope Benedict XVI to be his brother and a meaningful dialogue could ensue.
One cannot imagine two more disparate characters meeting and being cordial to each other than Pope Benedict XVI and Fidel Castro: the former being a pious and highly educated leader of the Catholic Church; the latter being a Marxist-Lenin socialist whose administration oversaw human rights abuses. Nonetheless, no matter how different, human beings are human beings and have that as their common denominator.
The meeting took place in March 2012 in Havana. Pope Benedict XVI offers a brief account of their rendezvous in his book, Benedict XVI: Last Testament. The Supreme Pontiff was in his last full year as leader of the Catholic Church, while Castro was 85 and ailing. The Pope’s impression of Castro was that he had not “yet come out of the thought-structures by which he became powerful.” The word “yet,” however, contained a glimmer of hope because the longtime leader of Cuba had seen through “the convulsions in world history” and was pleased that “the religious question is being posed afresh.”
Cuba’s dictator asked
