A Call From Cuba's Catholic Bishops That Echoes Beyond Its Shores
In a world where news cycles flit rapidly from one crisis to the next, it’s easy to miss the more profound tremors, especially those happening just 90 miles from our shores. However, when the Catholic Bishops of Cuba issue a message as morally urgent as Peregrinos de Esperanza (“Pilgrims of Hope”), it merits not just our attention but our reflection. The two-page document is embedded at the end of this post.
This powerful message, issued during the Catholic Church’s Jubilee Year, doesn’t come from exiles or activists. It comes from within Cuba, from pastors who walk daily among their people and live under immense scrutiny and state pressure. Their words are not rhetorical flourishes. They are calibrated, courageous acts of witness in a system that, since 1959, has actively worked to undermine the Church and silence dissent.
The Bishop discusses what we already know: Cuba’s dire conditions, which are described with stark clarity in terms of economic desperation, social atomization, and moral despair. It’s that the bishops have called, publicly and plainly, for structural, social, economic, and political changes in Cuba.
And they’ve called for these changes to arise from dialogue among all Cubans, without ideological filters or foreign interference. In their own words:
“The diversity of points of view is a necessity and a richness when seeking the greater good of the homeland, above individual interests.”
That is a remarkable statement in a country where, since 1959, diversity of thought has been met with punishment, exile, or worse.
Why This Matters in to the United States
This is not just a Cuban story. It’s a human story, and increasingly, it mirrors patterns we see across the Western world, including here in the United States. Declining trust in institutions, polarized discourse, and a deep confusion about what liberty means have become transnational symptoms.
And as the bishops of Cuba rightly observe, without hope, there is no future.
As Americans, especially as Catholics, we need to understand something critical. The Catholic Church is not a political party, a pressure group, or a lobbying outfit. It’s a spiritual institution. Its mission is to bring the Gospel to all people and be a moral voice for truth and justice. But that doesn’t mean Catholics should stand idle.
Some lay people misunderstand this distinction. They may be tempted to view the Church as a civil force meant to lead political change. Others misappropriate its voice for political ends, sometimes even falling into ideologies like liberation theology, which Saint John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI consistently warned against.
Authentic Catholic social engagement occurs when lay people, formed in conscience and grounded in Church teaching, enter the public square, not when the Church becomes a tool of the state or its opposition.
If you live outside of Cuba, it’s challenging to grasp the pressure the Church operates under. The Office of Religious Affairs—Cuba’s Stasi-like “religious police”—keeps the Church and all Christians on a tight political leash.
Priests and lay leaders in Cuba are often monitored and, at times, infiltrated by state security agents. Their ability to minister freely—even in purely pastoral roles—is routinely undermined by threats of surveillance, blackmail, and character assassination. This pervasive pressure is one of the key reasons why the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom has recommended that the U.S. government impose targeted economic sanctions and visa restrictions on members of Cuba’s Religious Police and their immediate family members.
Despite the systemic persecution, the bishops have spoken; they have done so before, but this time there is a slight edge in the tone and outlook. Their message is not one of politics as usual. It is a profoundly moral appeal: to create a climate “without internal or external pressures or conditions” where reform can happen. They are asking their countrymen not to be afraid of new paths. In a state that fears change, that is a radical invitation.
The future of Cuba, like that of any nation, belongs to its people. But the appeal made by the bishops speaks to anyone who still believes in freedom rightly understood—not as license, but as the conditions for human flourishing.
Here in the U.S., where cultural and political battles often reduce liberty to partisan squabbles, we could stand to learn from our neighbors. A police state may not enforce our divisions, but they are usually just as corrosive. Too many Americans are more interested in defeating each other than in defending the principles that make freedom possible.
We should be paying attention. Our goal should never be to impose our will on Cuba, but to remember that liberty, anywhere, is always hard-won and always worth defending. We can support reform not by dictating outcomes, but by controlling access to the U.S. market for Cuban state-owned or controlled enterprises, imposing visa restrictions on human rights abusers, enforcing targeted sanctions, and encouraging our allies to do the same. By doing so, we stand with the Cuban people—not just in word, but in deed—helping create the space where authentic change can take root, led by Cubans themselves.
