Taken from Internet

The Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel held a fraternal meeting with members of the National Council of Churches of the United States and its President Jim Winkler at the headquarters of the permanent mission of Cuba to the United Nations this Thursday afternoon.

Granma newspaper reports today that during the meeting the Cuban leader recognized the long tradition of friendship between the peoples of Cuba and the United States and thanked the solidarity of the National Council of Churches, reflected in multiple moments and actions in favor of lifting the blockade, in the battle for the return of the child Elián González, and for the liberation of the Cuban Five.

He also highlighted the relations between the churches of the United States and the Island, and emphasized that the restrictions on travel to Cuba limit the exchange between the religious denominations of both countries and the ties of thousands of its members with their families in the Caribbean nation.

At the end of the exchange, Reverend Joan Brown Campbell, whom the Cuban people remember with gratitude for her struggle to rescue the child Elián González, was approached by the Cuban journalists accredited here. She confessed to them that she was impressed by the meeting with the Head of State: “He touched my heart; he has a sense of responsibility to his people,” said the reverend.

“For those of us who have worked for a long time on this issue of Cuba and the United States, we have been impressed that he considers it important to continue the common work. Our country is the obstacle, not yours,” she added.

“Our conviction,” Brown Campbell said, “is that the blockade must be ended so that our people’s relations can reach the point where they seemed to have been a short time ago. Many Americans are working to end the blockade.

The reverend commented that it is now more difficult to travel to Cuba than before: “We need to eliminate that in order to have a presence in the Cuban people, as we had before.

Jim Winkler, general secretary and president of the National Council of Churches of Christ, said of the fight against the blockade: “First of all we need to talk to our representatives, congressmen and senators, as well as having conversations in the same churches about Cuban issues. We also need to pressure the White House to change its policy.

Winkler recalled that 50 years ago a battle was born with the first declaration, in 1968, of the National Council of Churches of the United States against the blockade. Every year since then, the denunciation has been made; and as we promised the President of Cuba tonight, the struggle will be every day, until the end of that hostile policy.

Regarding the meeting with Díaz-Canel, the religious leader said that no government in the world has welcomed them and has opened its arms like that of Cuba.

“We are convinced that the millions of Christians in the United States, and those in Cuba, can achieve significant changes together,” Winkler said.

Stan Hastey, representative of the Baptist Alliance of the United States, visibly moved by the recently concluded meeting, also offered statements to the press.

He expressed that the Cuban President had received them with kindness, with generosity, and that his words showed the confidence he has in religious people like them, in their causes that have been fixed and strong for decades.

“Many of us saw him for the first time tonight,” Stan Hastey said of Díaz-Canel; “as he said at the end, this is a family affair and you are part of that family.


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