WASHINGTON - Pope Francis played a key role in finalizing a deal to open relations between the United States and Cuba for the first time in 53 years, President Obama said Wednesday.
WASHINGTON — Pope Francis played a key role in finalizing a deal to open relations between the United States and Cuba for the first time in 53 years, President Obama said Wednesday.
"His Holiness Pope Francis issued a personal appeal to me and to Cuba's president, Raúl Castro, urging us to resolve Alan's case and to address Cuba's interests in the release of three Cuban agents, who've been jailed in the United States for over 15 years," Obama said.
Discussions took place in Canada over the past year and a half, and a key meeting also happened at the Vatican in the fall, according to a senior administration officialwho spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the talks publicly.
Aside from President Obama and the Cuban president, the pontiff was the only other foreign leader directly involved in the talks, the official said.
Francis' support was particularly important given Cuba's historical and cultural Catholic identity, the official said, and his election as the first-ever pope from Latin America gave him credibility.
When Obama met with Pope Francis at the Vatican in March, the topic of Cuba "got as much attention as anything the two of them discussed," the official said.
But a rare personal appeal from Francis is what helped get the negotiations past the finish line, the official said. The pope wrote a personal letter to Obama this fall — something he'd never done before — and a separate letter to Castro.
The letter invited the leaders to "resolve humanitarian questions of common interest, including the situation of certain prisoners," according to a Vatican statement congratulating the two countries Wednesday. The Vatican also said it received delegations from both countries in October and helped facilitate a dialogue.
"The Holy See will continue to assure its support for initiatives which both nations will undertake to strengthen their bilateral relations and promote the well-being of their respective citizens," the statement said.
The result: a major U.S. policy shift toward Cuba and a prisoner swap of three Cubans held on terrorism charges in the United States for a State Department contractor, Alan Gross, who was detained five years ago while delivering cellphones and other communications equipment to Jewish community centers in Cuba.
The White House announced Wednesday it will establish diplomatic relations with Cuba for the first time since 1961, with a U.S. Embassy in Havana. Travel restrictions will also be lifted, allowing travel for various new activities including research, education, religious, sports and cultural performance and certain business purposes.
Before he was Pope Francis, the Argentinian served as Bishop of Buenos Aires, where he was a prominent member of the Episcopal Conferences of Latin America. That group, along with the Vatican and U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, has long advocated for normalized relations between the United States and Cuba.
Their rationale "stems from the Vatican's long-standing desire to overcome conflictual divisions between nations," said Stephen Schneck, who works at the Catholic University of America. "It's very much part of the pope's own understanding of proper foreign relations."
In addition, the Latin American bishops believe residents in the hemisphere should be doing business with each other and getting along, Schneck said.
"(They've) seen this split between the United States and Cuba as a kind of split among American brothers," he said.
Dorell reported from McLean, Va.
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