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José Martí Airport, January 25, 1998.
Your Holiness,
I think we have given the world a good example: you, by visiting what some chose to call communism's last bulwark; we, by receiving the religious leader who had been imputed responsability for the destruction of socialism in Europe. There were those who foreboded apocalyptic events; some even dreamed of them.
It was ruthlessly unfair to connect your pastoral journey with the mean hope of destroying the noble objectives, and the independence, of a small country subjected to a blockade and a truly economic war for almost 40 years. Nowadays, Your Holiness, Cuba is confronting the mightiest power in history, like a new David -- albeit a thousand times smaller -- who, with the same sling of the Biblical times, strives for survival against a gigantic Goliath of the nuclear era who tries to prevent our development and subdue our people by hunger and disease. If that story had not been written then, it would have to be written today. This monstrous crime can neither be ignored nor excused.
Your Holiness,
Every time I hear or read slanders against my homeland and my people, fabricated by those who worship no other God than gold itself, I remember the Christians in ancient Rome so atrociously defamed since, as I already expressed the day you arrived, very often in history slanders have been used to justify the worst crimes against the people. I remember as well the Jews exterminated by the Nazis and the four million Vietnamese who perished under the napalm, the chemical weapons and the explosives. No one ever had any right to exterminate others for being Christians, Jews or communists.
Every detail of your visit and your every word were broadcast to the world by thousands of journalists. All over the country a large number of nationals and foreigners were interviewed. Our national television networks provided live coverage of every mass, homily and speech. Perhaps, never before were so many news and opinions about a small nation heard in such a short time by so many people all over the planet.
Cuba knows no fear and despises deceit; it listens with respect but believes in its ideas, it firmly defends its principles and has nothing to hide from the world.
I am moved by Your Holiness' endeavors to have more justice in the world. The states will disappear and the peoples will constitute only one human family. If the globalization you proclaim could be extended all over the Earth and the abundant goods humanity can produce with its talents and its work could be equitably distributed among all human beings living on our planet today, then a world could really be created for them where there would be no hunger and poverty, no oppression and exploitation, no humiliation and scorn, no injustices and inequalities; a world where they could live in full moral and material dignity, in real freedom: that would be a world of justice! Your ideas on evangelization and ecumenism would not be in contradiction with it.
For the honor of your visit, for all the affection you have shown the Cubans, for every word you have said -- even those I might disagree with -- on behalf of the Cuban people, Holy father, I thank you!
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