Cuba’s president says he may convert back to Catholicism

Raúl Castro (government.ru)

After meeting with Pope Francis, the President of the officially atheistic island nation of Cuba said he might convert back to Roman Catholicism. A reader sent me something related to the following:

The Cuban president, Raúl Castro, has thanked Pope Francis for helping to broker the diplomatic thaw between his country and the US, saying he was so impressed with the pontiff he was even considering converting to Catholicism.

“Bienvenido!” said Francis in his native Spanish as he welcomed Castro to his studio near the Vatican’s public audience hall for private talks that lasted nearly an hour.

After leaving the Vatican, Castro, the brother of Fidel, the revolutionary leader who brought the Communists to power in Cuba, gushed with praise for Francis.

“If the pope keeps going the way he’s going, I’ll come back to the Catholic church,” Castro said at a news conference at the office of the Italian prime minister, Matteo Renzi, whom he met after the Vatican talks.

“When the pope goes to Cuba in September, I promise to go to all his masses, and with satisfaction.”

It was a startling assertion for the leader of a communist country, where crackdowns on dissidents in the past had drawn sharp Vatican criticism.

“I am from the Cuban Communist party, that doesn’t allow [religious] believers, but now we are allowing it, it’s an important step,” Castro said. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/may/10/pope-meets-cuban-president-raul-castro

Pope Francis was a key figure in getting the US to improve diplomatic relations with Cuba. Cuba’s closest ally for a long time was the old atheistic Soviet Union. After it disbanded, Russia moved from being officially atheistic to being almost officially Russian Orthodox. Vladimir Putin is publicly Russian Orthodox and has the endorsement of its Patriarch Kirill. Furthermore, Pope Francis has cordial relations with Vladimir Putin, and they both kissed ta Marian image in a book nearly two years ago that was a gift to the pontiff by the Russian president (see Russia’s Putin and Pope Francis both kiss Marian icon).

So, the President of Cuba probably feels that being more involved with the Roman Catholics will not hurt him. As far as conversions to that faith go, both former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair and likely US presidential candidate Jeb Bush both converted to Roman Catholicism from Protestant backgrounds. And as far as Tony Blair goes, I believe that part of the reason was that he thought it could help him politically related to European Union politics.

The reader who brought me a link related to what the President of Cuba said, provided the following comment:

Pope Francis certainly is no ordinary Pope as he definitely looks like an angel but speaks like a dragon.

Pope Francis has done many things like that as regular readers of this Church of God News page are aware.

While it can be good that Cuba is becoming more tolerant of religion, many fail to understand that the Vatican has a plan related to a world religion that the Bible condemns (Revelation 13,14,17,18,19).

Irrespective of what happens in Cuba in the interim, the type of unity that the current ecumenical movement claims to want is not prophesied to be good according to the Bible.

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