Feb. 21 - This is the country that Pope Benedict plans to visit next month, to meet with the two criminal brothers responsible for more than 53 years of brutality against innocent Cuban men, women and children:
Archbishop of Santiago uses two church vans to evacuate Ladies in White from El Cobre Basilica amid fears that police would beat them.
The archbishop of Cuba’s second-largest city helped evacuate 14 women dissidents who had sought refuge at the El Cobre Basilica amid reports that police were waiting nearby to beat them, dissidents reported Monday.
Lady in White member Thaimí Vega alleged, meanwhile, that she suffered a miscarriage after police detained her to keep her from joining the other women for Sunday’s mass at El Cobre, nine miles west of Santiago de Cuba.
The incidents came on a weekend when police arrested about 30 members and supporters of the Ladies in White around the eastern region of Santiago alone, dissident Prudencio Villalón reported. Three more members were detained Monday.
Villalón, who accompanied the 14 Ladies in White to the Our Lady of Charity Basilica, said they declared a hunger strike on the steps after mass Sunday morning, saying that they had received threats from a large group of police deployed at a nearby junction.
“The police were sending (text) messages to the Ladies in El Cobre with things like ‘we’re waiting here to give you all such a beating,’” said member Belkis Cantillo, whose daughter was among the 14 women.
A priest in El Cobre telephoned Santiago Archbishop Dionisio Garcia, who also serves as head of the Conference of Cuban Bishops, and Garcia arrived around 7 p.m. with two church vans. He did not allow photos of him with the women, Villalón said.
It was the second time in as many months that officials of Cuba’s Catholic Church, sometimes accused of being too timid in their dealings with the communist government, have protected dissidents who sought the protection of temples
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