Magister on the new Cuban ambassador to the Vatican. The Archbishop of Havana is not pleased.

Roa Kourí, 69, is a prominent figure in the Cuban "nomenklatura." He is the son of one of the intellectuals closest to Castro during the revolution, Raúl Roa Garcia. He was an extremely close friend of Ernesto Che Guevara, and still has a great admiration for him. In the volume of memoirs he published recently, "En el Torrente," he recounts the many protagonists of the history of the second half of the 20th century – Mao and Eisenhower, Nehru and Kruschev, Nasser and John XXIII – with whom he dealt during his diplomatic career.

But now, at the crowning moment of his career with his prestigious post in Rome, Roa Kourí has sparked a genuine uproar within the Cuban bishops’ conference, of which cardinal Ortega is president.

The Cuban ambassador gave the interview to the Rome news agency ASCA, which released it on September 3. In it, after paying homage to the legend of Che Guevara and extolling the virtues of Castro’s revolution, Roa Kourí paints a portrait of the Catholic Church in Cuba in which the bishops are always the bad guys, except in a few cases, while the good guys are the priests and the people, again with a few exceptions. Being a bad guy means siding with the United States and the expatriates in Miami. And being a good guy means siding with Castro’s revolution. What about the Vatican? They’re with the good guys, according to Roa Kourí. Therefore, they are against the bishops.