A Vatican expert on Cuba told U.S. diplomats in 2007 that Cuban
Cardinal Jaime Ortega had pushed to shutter a highly regarded Roman
Catholic magazine that often criticized the communist system, according
to a State Department cable made available by WikiLeaks.
Cuba's government had wanted to close Vitral magazine for years but
feared a backlash and so "must be happy because the Church did its dirty
work for it," the expert noted.
The publication wasn't closed, but its
editor resigned in a huff and its content was toned down.
Ortega's spokesman denied in an email that the church had bowed to
government pressures and said that although the Cuban government had
complained about Vitral and other church publications, "the complaints
never turned into requests for closures."
"It's not important if the fact is real or not, it's simply
repeated even though there's no firsthand source that confirms it in
public," spokesman Orlando Marquez wrote. "It is good to ask who
benefits from this."
The cable sent to the State Department
by the U.S. Embassy to the Vatican also mentioned previously unconfirmed
reports that Vatican officials at times had thought that Ortega, who
also serves as the archbishop of Havana, was too friendly with Cuban
ruler Raul Castro.
"Vatican officials have hinted in the past
that Ortega has become too cozy with Castro," noted the cable, dated
May 14, 2007, and classified as "secret."
It was one of more than
250,000 State Department documents that WikiLeaks provided to McClatchy
Newspapers.
Ortega recently has won wide praise for his
unprecedented talks with Castro, which helped win the release of about
115 political prisoners over the past year.
But some critics have
claimed for years that he'd failed to take a strong stance against human
rights abuses. All but a dozen of the jailed dissidents were taken
directly from prison to airplanes that flew them to Spain, in what
critics have called a forced exile.
Vitral, founded in 1994
by the Diocese of Pinar del Rio in westernmost Cuba, was considered to
be the best church publication on the island. Its name, which means
stained-glass window, referred to the rainbow of opinions it published.
The magazine reported in April 2007 that "because of a lack of
resources, the editorial board ... will no longer be able to guarantee
publication." Director Dagoberto Valdes and most of his staff resigned.
The magazine all but halted its criticisms of the government and started
publishing every three months instead of two.
The announcement sparked speculation at the time that after Pinar del
Rio Monsignor Jose Siro Gonzalez, who backed Valdes, had retired in late
2006, his successor, Jorge Enrique Serpa Perez, had bowed to pressures
to shut down the publication.
One month later, Kirsten
Madison, then-deputy assistant secretary of state for Western
Hemispheric affairs, went to the Vatican and met with two monsignors who
dealt with Cuba issues to ask their help with Vitral and discuss the
island's human rights situation, according to the cable.
One
official who was new to his post repeated the version that Vitral was
closed for financial reasons, but the other was more experienced and
"offered a goldmine of information on the church in Cuba."
McClatchy
isn't publishing the names because the cable asked that they be protected.
The more experienced official "said that the
government had been trying to close Vitral for years, but was afraid of
the potential backlash. When the local bishop (Siro) retired, Cardinal
Ortega pressured new Bishop Serpa to shut it down, apparently motivated
by some animosity towards the leadership of the magazine," the dispatch
added.
The cable didn't detail how the official had obtained
that information. Valdes, who lives in Pinar del Rio, chuckled when the
dispatch was read to him but declined to comment. He now runs an
independent online magazine, Convivencia ("Fellowship").
"What I do know is that it (Vitral) did bother the government," he said.
An agricultural engineer, Valdes was demoted to a menial job in a state
tobacco enterprise in 1996 when he refused to stop working for the
magazine.
In the emailed statement, Marquez, the
communications director for the Havana archbishopric, said Cuban bishops
long had received complaints about several church publications.
"Some of these publications dedicate more attention to the social
environment in which we live," Marquez wrote, adding that he knew of
complaints about Vitral before and after 2007 as well as the magazine
that he edits, Palabra Nueva ("New Word").
"Despite all the
occasional complaints, which are not new, the bishops have always
defended the church publications before the authorities," he added.
Marquez noted that although the church respects the authority of
each bishop within his diocese, there was "only one occasion some years
ago in which Cardinal Ortega spoke directly with Dagoberto Valdes about
Vitral."
Complaints about Vitral reached the Vatican's
Embassy in Havana, he noted, "and from that very (office) they asked
Cardinal Ortega to visit Dagoberto and talk to him about the complaints,
but there was never any talk of closing the publication."