En route on March 23 to Latin America, Pope Benedict XVI called for patience with the Catholic Church’s effort to promote freedom in Communist Cuba and criticized Catholics who participate in the illegal drug trade or who ignore their moral responsibilities to seek social justice. Responding to a question about human rights in Cuba, Pope Benedict said that the “church is always on the side of freedom—freedom of conscience, freedom of religion.” He added, “We want to help in the spirit of dialogue to avoid the trauma and to help move toward a fraternal and just society” in Cuba. Asked about Latin America’s dramatic inequalities of wealth, Pope Benedict lamented what he called a widespread moral “schizophrenia” that stresses personal morality while ignoring social conscience. Commenting on the Mexican drug war that has claimed an estimated 50,000 people over the past five years, Pope Benedict said that the church has a responsibility to “unmask evil, unmask the idolatry of money that enslaves man” as well as the “false promises, the lie, the swindle that lie behind drugs.”
Pope in Mexico, Cuba
Show Comments (
)
Comments are automatically closed two weeks after an article's initial publication. See our comments policy for more.
The latest from america
In 2017 speech to a conference of the World Meeting of Popular Movements, Cardinal McElroy, the newly appointed archbishop of Washington, gives a hint as to how he might approach the incoming Trump administration.
“Juror #2” confronts us with an uncomfortable reality: following your conscience often comes at great personal cost.
Before it is a thriller, before it is a dark comedy, “Bad Sisters” is a love story.
In 2023, “Jesuitical” hosts Zac Davis and Ashley McKinless spoke with Cardinal Robert McElroy about his call for a church of “radical inclusion.” This week, Cardinal McElroy was named the new archbishop of Washington, D.C.