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March 3, 2008

Protestant leaders call for end to US economic embargo on Cuba

by Ecumenical News International

GEORGETOWN, Guyana — Protestant church leaders from the Caribbean and North America have called on the United States to lift its economic embargo against Cuba in the interest of justice and right relationships.

The call was issued by the Caribbean and North American Area Council of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches, which met from Feb. 25 to 28 here.

The council described the embargo as “a violation against the Cuban people and an exclusion that impoverishes and causes harsh suffering for women, men and children,” WARC said in a statement issued on Feb. 29 from its Geneva headquarters.

WARC groups 75 million Reformed Christians in 214 churches in 107 countries.

The United States imposed the embargo in 1962 after Fidel Castro’s communist-run government in Cuba expropriated the properties of U.S. citizens and corporations.

Castro, now 81 and in poor health, stepped down as Cuban president in February and was replaced by his brother Raul. The United States has said, however, there will be no early end to the economic sanctions against Cuba.

Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Vatican’s secretary of state, on a Feb. 20-26 visit to Cuba, called the economic embargo against Cuba “ethically unacceptable,” and “a violation of the independence of the people.”

Bertone became the first foreign dignitary to meet Raul Castro after he took office as Cuban president on Feb. 24. The cardinal said shortly before leaving the island that he hoped his six-day visit had helped give “new impetus to relations between the church and the government of Cuba.”