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Feature News | Monday, July 23, 2012

Mass at Shrine for Oswaldo Pay�

Miami priests, Archbishop Wenski recall founder of Varela Project

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Oswaldo Payá

Fotógrafo: FILE PHOTO

Oswaldo Payá

MIAMI | A Mass will be celebrated this Tuesday, July 24, at 8 p.m., at the Shrine of Our Lady of Charity for the repose of the soul of Oswaldo Payá, a Cuban dissident and human rights activist who died in a car accident July 22 near the city of Bayamo.

“Cuba and the world mourn Oswaldo Payá,” Archbishop Thomas Wenski said after learning the news. He described Payá as “both a patriot and a committed Catholic layman” whose vision for Cuba “was founded as much in Catholic social teachings as in the thought of Felix Varela and Jose Marti.”

He added that Payá’s “unexpected and tragic death… is certainly a blow and a setback for Cuba's small civil society; yet, his example and his courage will continue to inspire those both inside and outside of Cuba who work and struggle for a peaceful but real transition in Cuba to a democratic form of government in which both human rights and the rule of law are protected.”

“I had the opportunity, on several occasions, to spend time conversing with him,” Archbishop Wenski added. “My condolences to his wife and children, the members of his parish community in El Cerro, and to all who mourn his passing. May he rest in peace!”

Payá was 60 years old and worked as an engineer, but became known worldwide during the 1990s for his pacifist insistence that the Cuban government adopt democratic reforms. He founded the Cuban Liberation Movement (Movimiento Cristiano Liberación) and based on a clause in the Cuban constitution, initiated the Varela Project, which ultimately collected more than 24,000 signatures from Cuban citizens asking for a referendum that would guarantee freedom of expression and other human rights on the island.

The government responded with another referendum that declared Cuba’s communist system of governemnt “irrevocable.”

In 2002, Payá was awarded the Andrei Sakharov Prize, the highest honor conferred by the European Union, for his work in defense of human rights.

“We are going through a time of much pain but the Movimiento Cristiano Liberación will continue their struggle peacefully until all Cubans obtain the rights to which they have a right,” said Payá’s widow, Ofelia Acevedo. “Until the end, my husband devoted his life to obtaining that ideal. Now we go on, knowing that from eternity he encourages and accompanies us, until truth and justice turn our beloved island into a real home for all Cubans.”
 
Their daughter, Rosa María Payá, 23, is heard in an interview published in the website of Diario de Cuba, saying her father’s death was no accident. Three other people were in the car with him, including another Cuban dissident, Harold Cepero, who also died, and two other men, one a Spaniard and another a Swede, who were injured.

“Another car was trying to run them off the road, crashing into them at all times. So we think this was not an accident. They wanted to harm them and they ended up killing my father,” Rosa María Payá said.

Father Juan Sosa, pastor of St. Joseph Parish on Miami Beach, studied with Payá in the Marist school in Havana. “We belonged to the same parish and had some of the same teachers,” he recalled in an email.

“I was able to meet him again, after a few decades, in the late ‘80s when his role as a pacifist dissident was surfacing,” Father Sosa continued. “Later on, in 2001, when I was invited to conduct a one-week liturgy workshop in Havana, he attended a daily Mass I celebrated at our mutual home parish, El Salvador, of the neighborhood known as El Cerro. It was a wonderful experience for me to celebrate the Eucharist, surrounded by two of the Payá brothers and other members of the community, in the same church where my parents were married and where I was baptized.”

“He certainly paved the way for many others to speak out and to be counted in search of an authentic democratic process in a free society,” Father Sosa said.  

He also stressed that Payá had always remained a faithful Catholic.

“When I sent word to Cuba that (Miami Auxiliary) Bishop Gilberto Fernández had died, he sent a message in the name of the community,” Father Sosa added. “Archbishop Wenski made reference to that message at the bishop’s funeral... Bishop Gilberto had been the pastor of the Payá family in El Cerro before the bishop and his own family left for Spain.”

Father Juan Rumín Dominguez, rector of the Shrine of Our Lady of Charity in Miami, who also knew Payá personally, wrote on the shrine’s Facebook page: “United in faith we pray for his eternal repose (knowing that he will be interceding for freedom in Cuba), and we pray also for his beloved wife and children, for all his family members and collaborators inside and outside Cuba.”

“Those of us who knew him closely and had the enormous privilege of being counted among his friends can better understand the meaning of words such as sacrifice, perseverance, faith and hope, devotion, honesty, fidelity, friendship, homeland, coherence and many others. His conviction that Cubans have ‘a right to their rights’ has been the engine of his whole being and his life’s work, and he never allowed disappointments or misunderstandings to slow down his journey toward a free Cuba for all and with all,” Father Dominguez’s statement continued.

“Rest in peace, brother and friend, man of faith and of your people. May your legacy remain alive always, and do not cease to intercede so that our homeland will, very soon, be finally free.”

Correction: The date of Payá's death was initially incorrect. He died July 22, not July 23.

Comments from readers

Angelica Jenkins Lopez - 07/23/2012 03:23 PM
Un buen articulo dedicado a la memoria de Un gran cubano comprometido con Cuba y con nuestra Iglesia Catolica Para Cuba Ya es Hora.

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