If there are no political prisoners in FrancisCuba, then how can there be Ladies in White?
At Breitbart Francis Martel reports:
A Catholic church in the central Cuban city of Cienfuegos has banned female relatives of political prisoners from attending mass unless they no longer wear white, a color associated with political imprisonment in the nation. The slight to families of the abused follows the bewildering remark from Archbishop of Havana Jaime Ortega that Cuba no longer has prisoners of conscience.
Eight members of the Ladies in White activist group have attended Sunday Catholic Mass wearing white for years, sitting in the pews in silence unless participating in the Mass. No reports have surfaced of the women themselves–mothers, sisters, wives, and daughters of prisoners of conscience–disturbing the Mass. Nonetheless, a priest in Cienfuegos expelled them from his service, ordering them never to wear white again in his church if they wish to attend services.
The priest, identified as “Father Tarciso,” told Diario de Cuba that the women were “disrespectful,” stating, “I had told them that the way things are could not continue to be. … I cannot allow our community to be further fractured,” he argued. He accused them of taking photographs inside the church, which the ladies deny. Miladis Espino Díaz, a representative of the Ladies in White, noted that they were expelled from the church and, upon walking out, could hear the priest apologize to those in attendance for not having done it sooner.
“We do not only go to church because we are Ladies in White,” Espino Díaz told the newspaper, “but because we believe in God. We sing, we pray, we participate, we do nothing wrong.”
Following their removal from the church, the women testified to being the victim of a number of offensive acts, including a man “exposing himself and urinating in front of them,” “obscene gestures using fingers,” and “being called prostitutes.”
Offenses to the Ladies in White are common as they attempt to attend Mass; in a particularly gruesome instance last year, one woman was tarred for wearing white to the service.
Two male supporters of the group, Emilio García Moreira and Alexander Veliz García, began a hunger strike Thursday to support the return of the women to Mass.
Catholic religion is heavily regulated in communist Cuba, where it is technically a counterrevolutionary activity but has managed to persist, particularly given overtures by Pope Francis towards the Castro dictatorship. “If he keeps talking like this, I’ll return to the Church,” Raúl Castro said of the Pope this year following his support of major U.S. concessions to the Castro regime. Pope Francis was a direct mediator between President Obama and Raúl Castro before the American head of state chose to strip Cuba of its State Sponsor of Terrorism status–despite no evidence in a change of support to either the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia or Hezbollah–in exchange for nothing from Cuba.
Are the new enviro-apocalyptic totalitarian societies we’re being forced into just high-school popularity contests on steroids? You’re either in desperately in or your nowhere? What does a local homily sound like in Cardinal Ortega’s Cuba? If he can’t get away with the ridiculous claim that there are no political prisoners, maybe he can make their wives and mothers disappear!
Is this what faithful Catholics have to look forward to in the new FrancisChurch – government-loving flunkies posing as priests, calling true Christian witnesses ‘divisive,’ and kicking them out of Mass? That would never happen in the free world, no! The FrancisVatican officials are always respectful and welcoming of honest ideas. Sometimes they’re even funny? They never side with the enemy.
The Mass-going Ladies in White are nothing like prostitutes. How twisted must a Catholic get before he can insult and attack these brave women?
I’m not looking forward to the new Global Warming Church. I had to pray for all the rivers and various species at Mass today. Now that there are no Catholics there to ‘fracture the community,’ gay marriage is going to catch on like wildfire in the Cuban pews.