Sen. Jesse Helms, R-N.C., is chairman of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee and co-author of the Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act.
IN THE OPENING scene of a 1970s documentary on the Cuban revolution, a young Fidel Castro is sitting around a campfire with his troops, recounting a story about taking on the Roman Catholic Church and ``making a revolution against God.''
Castro is telling his troops about a priest in Caracas [during South America's independence war] who was ``inciting people'' -- preaching against the revolution -- when suddenly Simon Bolivar emerges from the throng. Castro says: ``[Bolivar] takes his sword out and walks to the priest, climbs up on the altar, and belts him with the sword right across his back, knocking him down.''
The soldiers cackle with laughter. The lesson, Castro says, is this: Bolivar ``challenged the supernatural powers. He took the offensive.''
Today, as Pope John Paul II tours Cuba, the tables are turned: The Catholic Church is the one taking the offensive. And Castro -- the last remaining dictator in the Western Hemisphere -- is about to be knocked down from the altar of his crumbling revolution.
In an ironic twist, the same Fidel Castro who fought the Catholic Church in his own ``revolution against God'' is turning to the leader of that church in a desperate bid for legitimacy. He invited John Paul to visit his tropical gulag, in the misplaced hope that the pope's visit will strengthen Castro's grip on power. He plastered Havana with posters showing him shaking hands with the pope at the Vatican. He was counting on the pope to denounce the U.S. embargo and to join him in a condemnation of capitalist ``materialism.''
Castro has made a grave miscalculation.
In John Paul, the Cuban people are meeting their liberator. No, Castro will not, under some papal spell, suddenly allow Cubans to choose their leaders in free elections. Cuba's political liberation will come in time. But today marks the moment of Cuba's spiritual liberation.
Spiritual liberation, the pope has demonstrated time and again, is the essential precursor to political liberation. With spiritual liberation comes the disappearance of fear. Cubans will hear the pope tell them, over and over in the same words that the risen Jesus told the apostles: ``Be not afraid!'' It is the maxim of his papacy.
Just as he has in the each of his 80 other foreign trips, the pope will remind the Cuban people of their ``inner freedom.'' He will tell them that, through their Christian faith, they already have been liberated -- they are already free -- because Christ has been sent for them, and all men, ``to establish justice on the Earth . . . a light for the nations, to open the eyes of the blind, bring the prisoners from confinement, and, from the dungeon, those who live in darkness.''
This message was the key to the pope's success in Poland. Following his 1979 visit there, a magical thing happened: Poles suddenly embraced this ``inner freedom.'' They were no longer afraid. They began to behave like a free people, even though they were still enslaved. They began to speak more freely, associate more freely, and form independent institutions. Yes, there were crackdowns, but the process -- once unleashed -- proved unstoppable.
That process begins now in Cuba. A giant portrait of Jesus Christ has been raised in Cuba's ``Revolution Square'' -- a place heretofore reserved for ideological rallies, military parades, and other displays of power by the Cuban Communist Party. A square that was built as a shrine to Castro's revolution will be transformed into a shrine of Christian faith.
And, as Castro sits there, watching it all, I suspect that a creeping feeling of discomfort will come over him. It will be the same feeling that came over his former comrade, Edward Gierek of Poland, 19 years ago, as this same pope said Mass in the center of Warsaw's Victory Square, and the Polish people began to chant: ``We want God!''
Looking out over the throng, Castro will come to the sudden realization that a door has been opened in the hearts of the Cuban people -- a door that he is powerless to shut.
Copyright © 1998 The Miami Herald