Your Holiness,

Cuba receives you with affection and respect, and it feels honored with your presence. You will find an educated and pro-solidarity people that have decided to achieve all the justice and have made big sacrifices.

From Marti we learned to worship the full dignity of human beings and we inherited the fraternal formula we still follow today: “with all and for the good of all.”

A famous Christian and intellectual, Cintio Vitier, wrote that “the true face of the Homeland… is the face of justice and freedom” and that “the Nation does not have any other choice: either it is independent or it is not anything at all.”

The biggest power of History has unsuccessfully tried to deprive us of our right to freedom, peace, and justice. With patriotic virtue and ethical principles, the Cuban people have tenaciously resisted knowing that it is also a legitimate right to follow our own path, to defend our culture, and to enrich it with the contribution of the most progressive ideas.

Without reason, Cuba is slandered, but we are confident that the truth, from which we never stray, always makes its way.

Fourteen years after Pope John Paul II visited us, the economic, political, and media blockade against Cuba still stands; and, it even has been stiffened in the financial sector. As a U.S. memorandum of April 6, 1960, -which was declassified decades later- reads, its goal continues to be (I quote) “to cause hunger, despair and the overthrow of the government.”

However, the Nation has invariably continued to change all what should be changed, in tune with the highest aspirations of the Cuban people and their free participation in the making of transcendental decisions of our society, including social and economic ones, which are decisions made only by small financial and political elites in almost all the countries of the world.

Several generations of compatriots have joined in the struggle for noble objectives and high ideals. We have faced shortages, but we have never failed to share what we have with those who have less.

Only as a sample of what could be done if solidarity prevailed, I say that in the last decade, with the help of Cuba, dozens of thousands of youths from other countries have been trained as physicians, 2.2 million low-income people have improved or recovered their sight, and 5.8 million people have learned to read and write. I can assure you that, within our modest means, our international cooperation will continue.

Your Holiness,

We commemorate the fourth centenary of the discovery and presence of the image of the Virgin of the Charity of El Cobre, on whose mantle the national coat of arms is embroidered.

The recent pilgrimage of the Virgin across the country united all our people, believers and non-believers, in an event of great significance.

Awaiting you in Santiago de Cuba, a protagonist of glorious episodes in the Cuban people’s history of struggles for their final independence, and also the village of El Cobre, where the Spanish Crown had to grant freedom to slaves who had risen up in the mines, eighty years before the abolition of slavery in our country.

We are satisfied with the close relations between the Holy See and Cuba, which have constantly developed for 76 years, always based on mutual respect and agreement on subjects that are vital to humanity.

Our government and the Catholic, Apostolic and Roman Church in Cuba have good relations.

The Cuban Constitution consecrates and guarantees full religious freedom to all citizens and, upon that principle, the government has good relations with all religions and religious institutions in our country.

Your Holiness,

Twenty years ago Fidel (Castro) took many people by surprise when he said that “an important biological species is in danger of disappearing because of the rapid and progressive deterioration of its natural living conditions: man.”

The number of threats against peace is ever-increasing and the existence of large nuclear arsenals is another serious danger for the human species.

Water or food will be, after hydrocarbons, the reason for a next plunder wars. With all the resources used to produce deadly weapons, poverty could be eliminated. The dramatic development of science and technology is not at the service of finding a solution to the big problems that afflict human beings. They frequently are used to create conditional reflexes or to manipulate public opinion. Finances are an oppressive power.

Instead of solidarity, a systemic crisis spreads, caused by the irrational consumption in opulent societies. A very small part of the world population accumulates considerable wealth while the ranks of the poor, the hungry, the sick without health care, and the abandoned, continue to grow.

In the industrialized world, the ‘indignados’ stand no more injustice, and, particularly among youths, there’s an ever-growing distrust of the social models and ideologies that destroy the spiritual values and produce exclusion and selfishness.

It is truth that the global crisis has a moral aspect and that there is a lack of connection between the governments and the citizens they claim to serve. The corruption of politics and the absence of true democracy are evils of our time. On this and other topics we see an agreement with your ideas.

In the face of so many challenges, Latin America unites around their sovereignty and works for integration and solidarity to make the two-hundred-year-old dream of our independence heroes come true.

Your Holiness will be able to address a people of profound convictions who will listen to you with attention and respect.

On behalf of the Nation, I give you the warmest welcome.

Thank you very much.