THE CHURCH INITIATES THE CONSPIRACY
The Cuban Revolution surged as a response of the people to the degrading conditions that prevailed in those times. The tyranny of Batista supported by his followers and the bourgeoisie, both serving U.S. interests, drove the people to extreme poverty, to the exploitation of the majority by the minority, to many social injustices which included a lack of an adequate education and health system.
During the revolutionary process the people benefited from the new laws passed to insure social justice and equality. Laws like the Law of Agrarian Reform whose aim was to distribute land to poor or landless peasants, a literacy campaign, and a reduction of rents, were just a few of the laws established to help the people.
In these crucial moments in the early stages of the revolution, as it was initiating it's battle to eradicate social injustices and survive the aggressions of the U.S. government, the church far from aiding this humanitarian process, started to propagate their anticommunist fervor and to conspire against the revolution.
In those crucial moments of antagonism between the church and the new government the leader of the revolution, Fidel Castro commented: "... The revolution was forged not to combat the church, the Revolution was forged to combat crime, combat exploitation and oppression, and all those who would sell their country..."
On August 1960 before an O.A.S (Org. of American States) summit in Costa Rica, to give the world an impression of chaos in Cuba and to give arguments for this organization's possible military intervention in Cuba, the Spaniard Jesuit priest, Marcial B. Rodríguez, directed a plan to blow up the military camp in Managua, Cuba. The Cuban government did not take any reprisals and handed the terrorist priest to the hierarchy of the church. In spite of this, the archbishops of Cuba circulated a pastoral in the summit supporting U.S. position against Cuba, exhorting the member states to condemn the island and to even take economic and military actions against it.
Days later, Juan Antonio Muller Quintana, cousin of the archbishop of Cienfuegos, Alfredo Muller San Martín, and member of the organization Save Cuba (SAC), was caught on September 15,1960, with 14 other terrorists, as they were preparing an attack on an army barrack, in Santa Fe, Cuba. Numerous weapons were found at that time.
September 26,1960: The Catholic church along with the U.S. and it's allies, made everything possible to slander the Revolution and it's leader Fidel Castro. As this failed, because of ample support given to Cuba by other states in the U.N., the U.S. church started once again it's campaign against Cuba. On the 13 of October of 1960 the monsignor Edigio Vagnozi, delegate of the Vatican in Washington, in the presence of cardinal Valecio Valeri, directed in Rome a reunion of Church leaders of Latin America with the purpose of mobilizing the clergy against the new government, utilizing propaganda and all it's influence.
At the same time the U.S. ambassador in Rome, Zeller Bach, petitioned the church to redouble it's effort and to intervene against the Cuban government in all Latin American countries.
November 9 - 13, 1960. The the Pope held the First Congress of Mariano, which counted with the participation of religious delegations from the American continent. To discredit the new government Cuban "Catholic exiles" were invited, with all costs paid by Cardinal Caggiani, the same person who in November of 1960 had received the ex-ambassador of Cuba in Buenos Aires, the latter asking the cardinal to condemn severely Fidel Castro; and to use arguments that the priests were victims of political persecution.
During the congress of Mariano, in Cuba, campaigns of agitation and propaganda were propagated by means of virulent sermons against the Revolution, and divulged amply in the exterior with the help of then archbishop of New York, Fulton Sheen. In those times pastoral letters circulated with the themes: "Is the revolution taking place in Cuba Christian?" and "Rome or Moscow?"
An event that confirms the intent of the reactionary cleric to utilize the National Catholic Congress to provoke and confront the Cuban Revolution, are best exemplified by the actions of one of the principal directors of the Democratic Christian Movement ( MDC ), Enrique Ros ( the father of the Republican Congresswoman from Florida, Ileana Ros Lehtinen, he was the first coordinator of the counterrevolutionary organization MDC once it went underground). He has affirmed that his organization utilized one of it's members, Jose Fernandez Badue, then spokesman for the archbishop of Santiago de Cuba, to persuade then archbishop Enrique Serrantes, to use the very sacred statue of La caridad del Cobre to motivate the faithful into a confrontation in a mass rally that was being held in the square La Plaza the La Revolucion, in support of the Revolution. This dirty maneuver was frustrated when the Revolution cooperated fully with the National Catholic Congress and insured it's success, attendees in the closing of the congress, included among others, leaders of the revolution, Fidel Castro and then President Osvaldo Doctico Torrado.