American bishops\' visit aims to speed Cuba-US thaw
Published:Wednesday | August 19, 2009 | 1:46 PM
US Catholic bishops think US President Barack Obama needs to move more quickly to patch up long bitter relations with Cuba and they hope to speed things up with a visit to the communist island this week, according to a report by Esteban Israel on www.caribbeannetnews.com.
A delegation led by Boston\'s Cardinal Sean O\'Malley arrived in Cuba yesterday, where they will meet with church leaders.
They will also look over reconstruction work to repair damage caused by three hurricanes last year, said Father Andrew Small, director of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops\' Collection for the Church in Latin America.
But the main purpose of their five-day trip is to send a message to the White House that it must move more quickly to improve US-Cuba relations.
\"Isolation doesn\'t help change. There has to be greater contact and the Obama administration has been, unfortunately, encouraging but painfully slow,\" Small said.
Cuba and the United States have been at odds since the 1959 revolution that put Fidel Castro in power and eventually turned the island just 90 miles off the Florida coast into a communist state.
Their trip follows an unpublicized visit in June by Timothy Broglio, archbishop for the US military, who went to the US naval base in Guantanamo, then met with church leaders in several Cuban cities.