Dissidents arrested as Pope Francis celebrates his first Mass in Cuba

Cuban authorities prevented leading dissidents from meeting Pope Francis in Havana on Sunday, in a sign of the Communist regime’s rigid intolerance of political opposition.

Two well-known dissidents, Marta Beatriz Roque and Miriam Leiva, had been invited by the Vatican to attend a vespers service led by the Pope’s in Havana’s historic baroque cathedral.

But they said they were detained by security agents and barred from attending the event.

Even the left in Spain criticized Pope Francis trip to Cuba more aimed to realize his teenager dream of meeting Fidel Castro than to bring a message of hope for the oppressed Cuban people by demanding real religious freedom, freedom of conscience, freedom of expression, political freedom, freedom to move inside the island and freedom to emigrate, the liberation of all political prisoners. At the request of the Church, the regime liberated over 3,000 prisoners but they were common criminals, but not a single prisoner of conscience.

Pope Francis, an admirer of Fidel Castro and Che Guevara, asked for the meeting with Fidel Castro that later was described as very friendly and familiar covering tan important theme as Castro’s years as student in a Jesuit high school and other venalities. After the meeting Francis expressed publicly his high esteem for Fidel Castro, the most brutal and longest lasting tyrant in the history of this hemisphere.

When Pope Benedict XVI visited Cuba he didn’t ask to meet Castro, although Castro came uninvited to see him at the Vatican Nunciature in Havana.

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