Fidel Castro Welcomes US Religious Leader
HAVANA TIMES — Former Cuban President Fidel Castro received Reverend Joan Campbell, former president of the National Council of Churches USA, at his home in Havana on Thursday, states the official newspaper “Granma”.
Campbell visits Cuba invited by the Matanzas Evangelical Seminary.
Fidel and Campbell have a “friendship of many years,” during which “Campbell has given countless expressions of solidarity” with Cuba, the newspaper said.
Campbell mediated in cases such as that of rafter Elian Gonzalez, repatriated to the island in 2000 after a bitter legal dispute between his relatives in Miami and his father in Cuba. Likewise in the case of the “Cuban Five” intelligence agents, who were imprisoned in the United States for espionage.
The newspaper did not publish pictures of the meeting.
Fidel Castro, 88, abandoned office in 2006 after serious illness and is rarely seen in public. He often receives foreign visitors in his home in Havana.
I try to focus on the present but it is amazing how Fidel is now embracing or at least looking closely at religion. I use Saul as an example. He was instrumental in persecuting many and became on of Christianity’s greatest Saints. My personal hatred and one that stands up more and more is slavery in the western hemisphere. Some of America’s founders and later signers of the Constitution were slave owners and they certainly have a lot to defend when they met their Maker.
Yet they risk their lives to flee …why?
I like Cuban socialism and I like what America’s first black lawyer Fredrick Douglas said about American wealthy and capitalism. Power conseeds nothing without a struggle. Fidel will not sit with Hitler. Castro will sit with Eugene Debbs, Helen Keller, Martin Luther king, Tommy Douglas and many others like them. The Cuban people actually care about people from around the world.
Hahaha! As the end nears, even an atheist like Fidel wants to get right with his maker. Talk about too little too late. There must be a special place in Hell for the Hitlers and the Castros.