The “Easter Pardon”: A Sacrilegious Mockery of Catholic Mercy
The cited article from EWTN News reports that the communist Cuban government announced the release of 2,010 prisoners on April 2, 2026, framing the act as a gesture “in the context of the religious celebrations of Holy Week.” This measure follows a pattern of periodic pardons by the regime, with the Cuban Ministry of Foreign Affairs stating the releases are based on criteria like “good behavior” and “state of health,” while explicitly excluding those convicted of violent sexual crimes, murder, and “crimes against authority.” The report notes this is the fifth such pardon since 2011, totaling over 11,000 releases. It also mentions a prior release of 51 prisoners in March 2026, described as being in the “spirit of good will, of close and fluid relations between the Cuban State and the Vatican.” The article concludes by highlighting the “deep and increasing humanitarian crisis” in Cuba, as described by Bishop Manuel de Jesús Rodríguez of Palm Beach, and the Diocese’s collaboration with Cuban bishops to provide aid.
This entire narrative is a theological and moral catastrophe, a perfect microcosm of the conciliar sect’s apostasy. It presents a communist dictatorship’s calculated public relations move as a benevolent act aligned with Catholic Holy Week, while completely omitting the non-negotiable Catholic requirements for true justice, conversion, and the social reign of Christ the King. The article’s passive acceptance of this framework, its silence on the regime’s systematic persecution of Catholics, and its portrayal of “dialogue” as a positive good, expose its authors as functionaries of the abomination of desolation standing in the holy place.
1. Factual Level: The Illusion of Benevolence and the Omission of Persecution
The article treats the Cuban government’s statement at face value, calling it a “pardon” and a gesture of “good will.” This is a deliberate misrepresentation. A pardon from a totalitarian regime is not an act of justice but a tool of political control, designed to create a false image of clemency while the machinery of oppression continues unabated. The criteria—”good behavior” in prison—are set and enforced by the same state that imprisons political dissidents, Catholics, and those who resist its atheistic ideology. The exclusion of “crimes against authority” is particularly telling: it ensures that those who have actively opposed the regime remain incarcerated.
The most glaring omission is the complete absence of any mention of the Cuban regime’s historic and ongoing persecution of the Catholic Church. Since the communist takeover, the Church has been subjected to harassment, expulsion of priests, surveillance, and the denial of permits for worship and religious education. Catholic schools were nationalized, religious orders were expelled, and public expressions of faith were restricted. The article cites Bishop Rodríguez’s lament about the “humanitarian crisis” but fails to connect this crisis directly to the intentional policies of the atheist state, which prioritizes ideological control over the welfare of its people. The collaboration of the Cuban bishops with this regime, facilitated by the “close and fluid relations” with the conciliar Vatican, is presented as a neutral fact, not as the scandalous betrayal of the Martyrs that it is. Where is the mention of Catholics like the Varela Project signatories or the Ladies in White (Damas de Blanco), who have been systematically imprisoned and beaten for their peaceful protests and their faith? Their absence from the narrative is a theological declaration: their suffering for Christ’s kingship is irrelevant to the new, naturalistic religion of “dialogue” and “humanitarian concern.”
2. Linguistic Level: The Naturalistic, Post-Conciliar Lexicon
The language of the article is steeped in the secular-humanist vocabulary of the post-conciliar era. Key terms reveal the underlying apostasy:
- “Religious celebrations of Holy Week”: This phrase drains the Passion, Death, and Resurrection of Our Lord Jesus Christ of its supernatural, redemptive, and juridical significance. It reduces the most sacred time in the liturgical year to a generic “celebration,” comparable to a cultural festival. It is the language of indifferentism, condemned by Pius IX in the Syllabus of Errors (Proposition 15: “Every man is free to embrace and profess that religion which, guided by the light of reason, he shall consider true.”). The article cannot bring itself to state that Holy Week commemorates the Sacrifice of Calvary for the redemption of souls, the defeat of death, and the establishment of Christ’s kingdom—truths that directly condemn a regime built on Marxist materialism and state atheism.
- “Good will” and “close and fluid relations”: These are the mantra of the Conciliar Sect‘s foreign policy, a direct repudiation of the Catholic principle that there can be no concord between Christ and Belial (2 Cor. 6:14-16). The phrase, applied to relations between a communist state and the Vatican, is a blasphemous euphemism. It describes a relationship of mutual legitimation where the Church softens its critique of tyranny in exchange for a seat at the table, and the regime gains international respectability. This is precisely the “dialogue” that Pope Pius IX condemned as the “principle of non-intervention” (Syllabus, Prop. 62) and the error that the civil power may “interfere in matters relating to religion, morality and spiritual government” (Prop. 44). The “good will” of a regime that starves its people and imprisons its saints is an illusion; the “relations” are a scandal that gives the impression that the Church approves of, or is complicit with, the oppressor.
- “Humanitarian crisis” and “moral imperative”: While providing material aid is a work of mercy, the article frames the entire response in purely naturalistic, sociological terms. There is no mention of the supernatural remedy: the preaching of the Gospel, the administration of the Sacraments (especially Penance and the Eucharist), the conversion of sinners, and the exorcism of the demonic ideology of communism. The “moral imperative” is reduced to social work, not to the primary duty of every Catholic and every bishop: the salvation of souls. This is the “cult of man” condemned by Pius XI in Quas Primas as the fruit of removing Christ from public life: “When God and Jesus Christ… were removed from laws and states… the foundations of that authority were destroyed.” The article accepts the premise that the state’s primary failure is logistical (food, medicine) rather than moral and spiritual (idolatry of the state, rejection of Christ).
3. Theological Level: The Systematic Erasure of Christ the King
The article is a study in dogmatic silence. It operates entirely within the realm of the natural, the political, and the humanitarian, which is precisely the error Pius XI identified in Quas Primas as the plague of secularism (laicism). The encyclical, instituting the feast of Christ the King, states explicitly:
“It has long been customary to call Christ King… but, if we delve deeper into the matter itself, we shall realize that the name and authority of king in the proper sense belong to Christ the Man; for it is only of Christ the Man that it can be said that He received power and honor and a kingdom from the Father.”
Christ’s kingship is proper, not figurative. It is a juridical, universal, and obligatory sovereignty. Pius XI continues:
“His reign, namely, extends not only to Catholic nations or to those who, by receiving baptism according to law, belong to the Church… but His reign encompasses also all non-Christians, so that most truly the entire human race is subject to the authority of Jesus Christ.”
Therefore, the fundamental error of the article and the event it reports is the implicit denial of this dogma. By treating the Cuban state as a neutral political entity with which the Church can have “fluid relations,” and by framing a prisoner release as a “goodwill” gesture compatible with Holy Week, the narrative assumes that Christ’s kingship is either non-existent or merely a private matter of conscience. This is the very error Pius XI came to condemn:
“The secularism of our times, so-called laicism, its errors and wicked endeavors… began with the denial of Christ the Lord’s reign over all nations; the Church’s authority to teach men, to issue laws, to govern nations… was denied.”
The article’s silence on this is not neutrality; it is apostasy. It accepts the modern, conciliar premise that the Church and the state occupy separate, autonomous spheres (the “two cities” of Masonic thought), whereas Catholic doctrine, as defined by Leo XIII in Immortale Dei and Pius XI in Quas Primas, holds that the state has the duty to publicly recognize and obey Christ the King, to enact laws in conformity with His law, and to protect the Church’s liberty. A communist state, by its very nature, is the antithesis of this duty. Any “relation” with it, without the explicit, uncompromising demand for its subjection to Christ and the liberation of the Church from its yoke, is a scandalous compromise. The article mentions no call for the regime to allow free evangelization, to return confiscated Church property, to permit Catholic education, or to recognize the Pope’s (true) authority. It therefore implicitly endorses the conciliar error of “religious freedom” (Dignitatis Humanae), which propounds the false idea that the state has no duty toward the true religion.
4. Symptomatic Level: The Fruit of the Conciliar Revolution
This article is not an isolated incident; it is the inevitable product of the revolution initiated by John XXIII and his successors. The “close and fluid relations” mentioned are the direct outcome of the Vatican’s Ostpolitik and the policy of detente with communist regimes, begun in the 1960s and formalized in the “peace agreements” with Eastern European states. This policy was justified by the new theology of “signs of the times” and the “preferential option for the poor,” which replaced the Catholic doctrine of the Social Kingship of Christ with a Marxist-tinged analysis of “structural injustice.”
The article’s author, writing for EWTN—a network that has fully embraced the conciliar hierarchy—operates within the hermeneutic of continuity, which is a contradiction in terms. It attempts to graft the pre-conciliar language of “Holy Week” and “bishops” onto a post-conciliar reality of apostasy and idolatry. The Bishop of Palm Beach’s statement that prayer “must lead to action” and that providing aid is a “moral imperative” is devoid of any reference to the first and greatest action: the conversion of the sinner and the re-establishment of Christ’s reign. It is the language of the World Council of Churches, not of the Catholic Church. It echoes the “liberation theology” condemned by Pius XI as the “error of communism” (cf. Divini Redemptoris), which seeks a merely socio-economic liberation without the necessity of grace and the Sacraments.
Furthermore, the article’s focus on the number of prisoners released (2,010) and the total since 2011 (11,000) reduces human persons, made in the image and likeness of God, to statistics in a bureaucratic report. This is the naturalistic, statistical mindset of the modern world, utterly alien to the Catholic view that each soul is of infinite value, redeemed by the Blood of Christ. The true Catholic response would not be to count heads but to demand: Are these souls being given the chance to receive Baptism, to confess their sins, to receive Holy Communion? Is the Catholic faith being freely preached in the prisons? Is the regime allowing missionaries to enter? The article asks none of these questions because, within the conciliar paradigm, they are considered irrelevant or “proselytizing.” This is the ecumenism of indifference, where the unique means of salvation (the Catholic Church) is obscured in favor of generic “humanitarian” gestures that leave souls in the state of mortal sin and under the tyranny of the devil.
5. The Missing Magisterium: Pius IX’s Syllabus and Pius XI’s Quas Primas as the Uncompromising Standard
To understand the depth of the error, one must contrast the article’s assumptions with the unchangeable Magisterium. Pius IX’s Syllabus of Errors (1864) provides the definitive refutation of every premise underlying this report:
- On the State’s Relation to Religion (Props. 19-55): The Syllabus condemns the idea that the Church is not a perfect society with her own rights (Prop. 19), that ecclesiastical power needs civil permission (Prop. 20), that the Church has no right to define that Catholicism is the true religion (Prop. 21), and that the Church and state should be separated (Prop. 55). The article’s acceptance of “fluid relations” between a communist state and the Vatican assumes all these condemned propositions. It treats the Cuban state as a legitimate, neutral power with which the Church can negotiate, rather than as a regime in mortal sin that must be converted and subjected to Christ the King.
- On Religious Liberty (Props. 15-18): The Syllabus condemns the errors that every man is free to embrace any religion (Prop. 15), that men can be saved in any religion (Prop. 16), and that Protestantism is a form of the true Christian religion (Prop. 18). The article’s neutral tone toward the Cuban state’s atheism, and its framing of a “Holy Week” gesture from that state as positive, implicitly endorses the indifferentism of Prop. 15. It suggests that the state’s “goodwill” in allowing a release is a religiously neutral or even positive act, regardless of the state’s official atheism and persecution of the Church.
- On the Nature of Law and Authority (Props. 56-64): The Syllabus condemns the idea that moral laws do not need divine sanction (Prop. 56), that civil laws can be separated from divine law (Prop. 57), and that authority is merely “numbers and the sum total of material forces” (Prop. 60). The entire premise of the article—that a state’s “pardon” is a moral good in itself—is based on a purely naturalistic, utilitarian view of law and authority. A true Catholic analysis would ask: Is this act in conformity with the Eternal Law? Does it serve the supernatural end of man? The article does not, because it has no supernatural framework.
Pius XI’s Quas Primas (1925), quoted extensively in the provided files, is the positive counterpart to the Syllabus. It declares that Christ’s kingdom “encompasses all men” and that “the state must leave the same freedom to the members of Orders and Congregations” and that rulers have the “duty to publicly honor Christ and obey Him.” The feast of Christ the King was instituted precisely to combat the secularism that “denied Christ the Lord’s reign over all nations.” The article’s silence on this feast, on the duty of the Cuban state to recognize Christ, and on the Church’s right to freedom from state interference, is a practical denial of this encyclical. It treats the state’s action as a political favor, not as the performance of a duty it has willfully neglected for decades.
Conclusion: The Scandal of Moral Equivalence
The EWTN article, by presenting a communist dictatorship’s calculated pardon as a gesture aligned with Catholic Holy Week, and by omitting any call for the regime’s conversion, any defense of the persecuted Church, and any assertion of Christ’s absolute kingship, commits a grave scandal. It creates a moral equivalence between the persecutor and the persecuted, between the atheist state and the suffering Church. It suggests that the regime’s “goodwill” in releasing some prisoners is a step in the right direction, worthy of mention alongside the Church’s humanitarian efforts. This is the language of the Conciliar Sect, which has traded the militant truth of “extra ecclesiam nulla salus” for the diplomatic falsehood of “dialogue and encounter.”
The true Catholic response, rooted in the pre-1958 Magisterium, would be: The Cuban regime is a tyrannical government in mortal sin, guilty of violating the natural law and the divine law by persecuting the Church and promoting atheism. Its “pardon” is a cynical political act, not an act of Christian mercy. The only “goodwill” acceptable to God is the regime’s unconditional surrender of its power to enact laws in conformity with the rights of Christ the King and the liberty of His Church. The bishops’ collaboration with this regime, under the auspices of the conciliar Vatican, is a betrayal of the martyrs. The “humanitarian crisis” is a direct consequence of the regime’s rejection of God’s law; the only true solution is the conversion of Cuba to the Catholic faith and the establishment of a state that publicly recognizes Our Lord Jesus Christ as its King. Until then, every release is a tactical maneuver, and every “relation” is a scandal that leads souls to hell.
The article’s failure to proclaim this is not journalistic oversight; it is a theological necessity of the conciliar system, which has exchanged the sacrifice of the Mass for the “celebration of the community,” and the social reign of Christ for the “dialogue of civilizations.” It is a symptom of the abomination of desolation standing where it ought not.
TAGS: Cuba, communist persecution, Christ the King, Quas Primas, Syllabus of Errors, Pius IX, Pius XI, humanitarianism, dialogue, Ostpolitik
Source:
Government of Cuba announces release of more than 2,000 prisoners for Easter (ewtnnews.com)
Date: 04.04.2026