Warwick Fry, October 3rd 2015

Fidel Castro famously said in 1973 that Cuba might be able to resume diplomatic relations with the US when there was a black President in Washington, and a Latin American Pope in the Vatican.

Both of these events have come to pass. Cuba can now open an Embassy in the United States, and the US can now have an Embassy in Cuba. While there is still a trade embargo on Cuba (in place for nearly 60 years now) US citizens can now freely travel to Cuba and Cuba has been taken off the US list of ‘terrorist’ states.

Perhaps most gratifying for the Cubans is the release of the ‘Cuban Five’ – five Cubans working for Cuban intelligence who identified those responsible for shooting down an airliner carrying a team of Cuban athletes in 1982. They reported their findings to the FBI and the CIA and were promptly gaoled.

But the apparition of a ‘Green Pope’ is perhaps the most interesting aspect of Fidel’s prophetic vision for the future. Pope Francis (the First - named for St Francis of Assisi), first Jesuit Pope first non -European Pope (since a Syrian Pope Gregory 3rd in 741 AD) and much to the satisfaction of Fidel, as an Argentinian the first Latin American Pope.

Wikipedia notes this about him; “Francis opposes warming, consumerism, and irresponsible development  , a focus of his papacy with the promulgation of 'Laudato si'. In international diplomacy, he helped to restore full diplomatic relations between the U.S. and Cuba.”

He is not another Pope John the 23rd - a 1960s Pope of liberal bent that saw the rise of ‘Liberation Theology’ – a movement within the Catholic Church that supported social change and community projects rather than blessing the births, deaths, marriages and weapons of a spoiled elite. Liberation Theology has been on the back foot since the neo-liberal backlash to the liberation struggles in Latin America of the 1980s. Pope Francis is picking up the sticks from that backlash. While he distances himself from Liberation Theology he apparently has the same agenda. Interestingly he was a bouncer in a night club before he entered the seminary. Maybe he is taking a ‘softly-softly’ approach?

What fascinates me is his powerful recognition of green issues in his latest encyclical. It doesn’t start with the Pope. Last year I was privileged to have been in contact with, and record interviews with Liberation Theology priests, some of whom had served in the revolutionary Sandinista government of Nicaragua in the 1980s. Miguel D’Escoto was one of them He was the Minister for Foreign affairs for the Sandinista government and visited Australia in 1983 with a Sandinista delegation. I wanted to question him about his relationship with the current Pope. He had been ‘disallowed’ by the former Vatican hierarchy to practice ‘priestly functions’ because he had served on the revolutionary government of the Sandinistas.

Pope Francis has since lifted these restrictions on Miguel D’Escoto and other Nicaraguan Liberation Theology priests for being involved in political processes that included marginalised people. The gag did not stop D’Escoto. He served as the President of the General Assembly of the UN in 2008 and is currently engaged in rewriting the constitution of the UN to include ‘green clauses’  (respect for the earth) that reflect the clauses that Evo Morales, President of Bolivia, has had written into the Bolivian constitution, empowering respect for the ‘Pacha Mama”  - the Earth.

The Latin American influence on the Catholic hierarchy seems to be taking root. Whatever one might think about the Catholic Church many of the agonising blocks to thinking rationally about issues like climate change and unfettered corporate domination of our society are being removed by a sensible person at the top of the hierarchy who seems to know more about what he is doing than his predecessors. (John Paul the 23rd being a remarkable exception, of course).