NEWS ANALYSIS: Pressure from churches behind Clinton’s easing of Cuban sanctions

c. 1998 Religion News Service WASHINGTON _ President Clinton’s decision to ease some U.S. sanctions against Cuba, announced last Friday (March 20), was an outgrowth of renewed activism by U.S. religious groups, especially the Roman Catholic Church, aimed at reaching out to Cuban people in the wake of Pope John Paul II’s January visit to […]

c. 1998 Religion News Service

WASHINGTON _ President Clinton’s decision to ease some U.S. sanctions against Cuba, announced last Friday (March 20), was an outgrowth of renewed activism by U.S. religious groups, especially the Roman Catholic Church, aimed at reaching out to Cuban people in the wake of Pope John Paul II’s January visit to the island nation.

At the same time, the administration’s decision was also driven in part by concerns about U.S. relations with a post-Castro Cuba.”We’re reaching out to the people of Cuba to make their lives more tolerable,”Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said at the time the sanctions were eased.”We have to look beyond Castro.” The pope, who condemned the longstanding U.S. trade embargo against the communist island as”immoral,”the U.S. Catholic Church, the National Council of Churches and other religious organizations that have long sought an easing of U.S. sanctions, gave the administration the”political cover”that enabled it to take a tiny step toward thawing U.S.-Cuba relations.”We are pleased to know that President Clinton has been listening to the growing clamor of the churches,”said the Rev. Rodney Page, executive director of Church World Service, the relief arm of the National Council of Churches.”It is our deepest hope that the reinstatement of direct flights will help reunify Cuban families here and abroad, as well as guarantee the swift delivery of critical food and medicine to a people who have suffered mightily under the U.S. embargo,”Page said.


Clinton’s action in allowing direct flights to Cuba will make providing humanitarian aid there easier to arrange and less costly to accomplish. Church groups also hailed Clinton’s easing of restrictions that had blocked Cuban Americans from providing financial aid to family members in Cuba.”Cuban Americans will once again be free, as they should always be, to send needed financial aid directly to their family members in Cuba,”said Archbishop Theodore E. McCarrick of Newark, N.J., chairman of the U.S. Catholic Conference’s committee on international policy.

Nor did the religious groups wait to respond to the eased situation.

On Monday (March 23), the first part of a stockpile of $6 million in medical aid collected by the New York City-based Catholic Medical Missions Board left the United States for Cuba.

Clinton acknowledged he was taking the steps to”build further on the pope’s visit”to Cuba. However, religion’s role in U.S.-Cuba relations began long before the historic papal visit and did not end when the pope returned to Rome.

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Since Cuba’s economy plunged into freefall in the early 1990s with the collapse of the Soviet bloc, U.S. religious leaders have taken the lead in providing humanitarian aid to the island and in calling for an end to the economic embargo aimed at toppling Castro.

Castro has reciprocated by loosening restrictions on religious worship and by changing Cuba’s constitution in 1992 to make the nation a secular rather than atheist state.

Last year, most of the major U.S. religious organizations backed bills in the House and Senate aimed at lifting U.S. restrictions on the sale of food and medicines to Cuba. After the pope’s visit, U.S. religious leaders, especially the Roman Catholic clergy, stepped up their efforts to pressure the U.S. government toward change.

McCarrick, for example, who was in Cuba with the pope, said upon his return it is”incumbent on us … to take a fresh look at the issues that continue to divide us.” The archbishop, who had earlier pressed for an end to the ban on direct flights, welcomed the president’s actions, but said he”looked forward to further initiatives both to assist the Cuban people and to advance reconciliation and better relations between them and the people of the United States.” (END OPTIONAL TRIM)


The day before the administration announced its Cuba policy changes, Cardinal Bernard Law of Boston repeated his call for a new relationship between the United States and the island.”The lack of medicines more quickly and cheaply attainable from the United States severely restricts the treatment that can be provided (in Cuba),”said Law.”The effect of the lack of sufficient food threatens the most vulnerable members of the population, the young and the old. The people of Cuba deserve better than that from us.” The aid shipped to Cuba on Monday is part of $6 million in drugs and medical supplies collected from the nation’s major pharmaceutical companies by the Catholic medical mission agency just prior to the pope’s visit. Responsibility for the huge shipment was transferred to Catholic Relief Services, which works with Cuba’s Caritas to distribute humanitarian aid.

Kate Higgins, Catholic Medical Mission Board’s associate pharmaceutical coordinator, said she traveled to Cuba last November to assess the medical needs of the island. Upon returning to the United States she discovered the drug companies were more than willing to meet those needs, she said.

Higgins collected nearly $1 million of insulin, enough to”take care of every person in Cuba who has diabetes for the next six months.”She also tapped the drug companies for another $5 million in assorted antibiotics, vitamins, nutritional supplements, bandages, gloves and”a variety of basic supplies.” Chris Gilson of Baltimore-based Catholic Relief Services said the organization applied on Feb. 10 for a special license to ship the aid directly to Havana. On March 20, the date Clinton announced his new Cuba initiative, Gilson was still waiting for the permit.

Impatient with the administration’s lack of response, Gilson moved about $1 million of the medicines through Canada. The rest remained in a warehouse in Queens, N.Y.”Worse than the financial expense is the time loss,”he said.

On March 23, however, just a few days after the president’s announcement, a refrigerated airplane took off from Miami with part of the shipment’s insulin, which must be shipped cold. Other flights are scheduled for later this week.

B’nai B’rith also took immediate advantage of the relaxed travel restrictions. The day after the president’s announcement, a delegation of the Jewish group’s members from Pittsburgh rushed to Havana with medicines and food.


DEA END RADELAT

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