Guest Author
As Pope Francis visits the United States for the very first time, it is our privilege as Catholics and Americans to welcome His Holiness to our country. Here, he will find people who are uniquely free.
We Americans are free to give our opinions and make our voices heard. We work in a free enterprise economy that, for over 200 years, has lifted countless individuals above the circumstances of their birth to achieve their God-given potential. We have been an exceptional country because, here, people are free to practice their faiths and worship God.
And we have enshrined in our founding documents and promoted the fundamental truth, all around the world, that the rights of all men, women and children — not simply Americans — come from God.
Religious freedom is often referred to as America’s first freedom. Our country was founded by religious exiles and built on the belief that God has given all people certain inalienable rights. Government’s role in society is to protect these rights and ensure that we are safe from religious persecution and discrimination.
For centuries, faith has helped us overcome problems and helped us work to achieve a more perfect union. It has inspired the many leaders who played a key role in abolishing slavery, protecting civil rights and, hopefully one day, becoming a nation where all life — from conception to natural death — is protected.
Faith has also greatly shaped America’s role in the world. We are a country that embodies the Bible verse from Luke chapter 12, verse 48 — “From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded.”
Our brave men and women have made many sacrifices in just wars to defeat the forces of evil. We have exported our greatest values: freedom and opportunity, which have lifted millions out of poverty. At home, these values allow Americans to use their God-given potential and make their dreams reality. For this reason, we are truly blessed, and I am excited for Pope Francis to see this firsthand.
This month, the Pope also visits a country that is close in distance from the United States, but far from free.
In Cuba, His Holiness won’t find a government that protects its people and their God-given rights. Instead, he will find a regime that oppresses people and hinders progress, both socially and politically. He will meet with a regime that is solely responsible for the Cuban people’s plight over the past 56 years.
He will find a place where every Sunday in the past six months — as they’ve been doing for many years — Cuban agents are assigned to a Catholic Church where their instructions are to beat, jail and intimidate the Ladies In White that attend Mass and who afterwards peacefully take to the streets calling for the release of their husbands, sons and fathers who are political prisoners.
My hope is that the Pope’s visit to Cuba will remind all the Cuban citizens that they possess dignity and fundamental rights that come from God and that the Castro regime has no claim on changing what is 100% God-given.
I pray the Pope can use his moral authority to inspire true religious freedom, and bring us closer to the day when freedom can finally take root on the island country; because only then will the people of Cuba prosper and have the opportunity to live out God’s plan.
It has been seven years since the last papal visit to the United States, and our world is rapidly changing. Now more than ever, our faith is important. But even when we are deeply divided over important issues facing our country and the world, “In God We Trust” for the guidance and wisdom to do what’s both right and necessary for our Republic.
After all, it is our belief in a greater God that gives us hope each day for a brighter future. Please join me in welcoming Pope Francis to the United States, and helping him to spread peace and prosperity to people around the world.
One comment
Leonard Lawrence
September 20, 2015 at 11:00 pm
It’s bad enough that Pope Francis went to Cuba, a communist country which routinely violates the civil and religious rights of it’s citizens, and systematically jails and tortures dissidents, but now, by going out of his way to meet Fidel Castro, who is personally responsible for numerous atrocities, I think that it’s quite clear to anybody with half a brain that Pope Francis is a communist, or at least, a communist sympathizer. In either case, I consider him an enemy of the United States of America. I know that in the past, two popes have visited communist Cuba (John Paul II in 1998, and Benedict XVI in 2012), but this Pope is the only one of the three that seems to embrace socialist and communist philosophies, such as the redistribution of wealth, and the denunciation of capitalism. Two months ago, on a visit to Bolivia, Pope Francis met with the county’s socialist president Evo Morales, and accepted a “communist crucifix” from him.
Fidel Castro’s 12 Greatest Atrocities and Crimes:
1. Fidel Castro’s firing squads in Cuba (The Cuba Archive, which documents deaths and disappearances resulting from Fidel Castro’s Cuban revolution, has documented 3,615 firing squad executions conducted by the Cuban state since Castro took over on January 1, 1959).
2. Fidel Castro’s extra judicial killings (In addition to the firing squad executions, 1,253 extrajudicial killings have been attributed to the Castro regime).
3. Fidel Castro’s 1994 sinking of the “13 de Marzo” tugboat killing Cuban women and children.
4. Fidel Castro’s 1996 shoot down of an American civilian aircraft over International waters, killing 4 people including 3 American citizens.
5. Fidel Castro backs Latin American narcoterrorists, Islamic terrorist groups such as Hezbollah, and harbors fugitive cop killers from the United States (Cuba is still harboring over 70 fugitives wanted by U.S. law enforcement officials, including Joanne Chesimard, who murdered a New Jersey State Trooper in 1973, and Victor Manuel Gerena, who is on the FBI’s “Ten Most Wanted” list for a brutal armed robbery in Connecticut in 1983. The Cuban regime also continues to harbor agents from Foreign Terrorist Organizations such as the FARC and the ETA).
6. Fidel Castro’s Cuban political prisoners.
7. Fidel Castro’s Cuban forced labor camps, the UMAPs (“Military Units in Aid of Production,” known better by the Spanish acronym UMAP).
8. Fidel Castro’s religious repression against Cuban clergy and the Catholic Church (After taking power, Fidel Castro jailed, killed, or exiled 3,500 Catholic priests and nuns. His regime confiscated seminaries and nationalized all Catholic properties).
9. Fidel Castro separates Cuban families.
10. Fidel Castro restricts the movement of Cubans.
11. Fidel Castro’s foreign interventions resulting in thousands of deaths.
12. Fidel Castro’s espionage.
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