VATICAN CITY — Squeezed by the Trump administration and facing its greatest threat in decades, the Cuban government is seeking the intercession of a higher authority: the Vatican.
In senior-level meetings, including with Pope Leo XIV, Cuban officials have petitioned the Vatican to serve as an interlocutor with the United States. The goal is to facilitate talks and secure an easing of the White House pressure campaign to isolate Cuba through a de facto oil blockade that is causing crippling fuel shortages and worsening blackouts, according to several people familiar with the talks.
Havana’s plea comes as the Vatican’s concern for Cuba and its 11 million people is growing.
The oil crisis is so bad that it is hampering distribution of U.S. government-funded humanitarian aid being channeled through the Catholic Church. The White House has cited that assistance as evidence that it is trying to help, not hurt, the Cuban people.
Over the past several weeks, crates of aid have been stranded for extended periods at Cuban docks because of a lack of fuel for transportation. The problem is so severe that some assistance has had to be distributed using donkeys, according to people familiar with the church’s relief effort.
Pontiffs at least since John Paul II in 1998 have denounced the broader U.S. trade embargo on Havana (largely in place since 1960) even as the Vatican more quietly has served as a key mediator between the communist government and Washington — most significantly when it laid the diplomatic groundwork for the historic visit by President Barack Obama to Cuba in March 2016.
The hope now, several of the people said, is predicated on the notion that a lofty institution led by a new American pope may have more sway with President Donald Trump, who has threatened to “take” Cuba,as well as with Catholic hawks in his administration who are pressing for regime change in Havana.
“The Cubans have always believed that the Vatican has somewhat of a magical property,” said John S. Kavulich, president of the U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council. “And that its imprimatur will result in more coming back to Cuba than they are putting in.”
This article, including previously unreported details of the talks, is based on interviews with 10 people, including five familiar with the diplomatic effort who spoke on the condition of anonymity to frame sensitive discussions.
The Cubans are seeking the Vatican’s help at a time when Havana’s traditional allies, including Venezuela and Mexico, appear unwilling or unable to defy Trump to come to Cuba’s aid. A Russian official said Wednesday that his country was sending humanitarian supplies to Cuba, including fuel, but did not elaborate. Moscow’s stomach for a showdown with Washington remains in question.
The U.S. oil blockade imposed in January is paralyzing transportation, hospitals and public services and generating levels of hardship that some observers say is the worst since the Cuban “special period” in the early 1990s, when the collapse of the Soviet Union deprived the communist government of its primary backer.
More sensitively, the Holy See is being asked to figure out “the lowest common denominator” concession that Havana would need to make for the Trump administration to ease its pressure campaign, according to one person briefed on the talks.
That does not mean the effort will work.
Leo, who was born in Chicago, is well regarded in the U.S. But the Trump administration has not been moved by the pontiff’s occasionally pointed, but more often indirect, criticisms of its policies, domestic or foreign. Trump last week appeared to brush aside a question on the Iran war focused on Leo’s call for a ceasefire, saying, “You don’t do a ceasefire when you’re literally obliterating the other side.”
“The administration is not going to let the Vatican dictate its Cuba policy,” one of the people familiar with the talks said. “They’re welcome to speak, but the response is, ‘You’re right, there are problems, but we didn’t cause them.’”
“The Cuban government could make changes that would mitigate them,” this person continued. “So we’re not terribly excited about a quid pro quo because we really don’t need to do anything to get them to do anything because they’re collapsing on their own and so, eventually, we’re [going to] get what we want.”
The Catholic Church in Cuba remains the island’s most significant national institution after the government, and it has grown more vocal — with bishops there issuing a daring call at the end of January for the “political changes that Cuba needs.”
But they also declared that “governments should be able to resolve their disagreements and conflicts through dialogue and diplomacy, not coercion or war” — words that Leo echoed in a public appeal. On Feb. 1, he called “all responsible parties” to dialogue “to avoid violence and every action that could increase the suffering of the dear Cuban people.”
The Vatican has been transformed in recent weeks into an impromptu staging ground for talks on Cuba’s future.
On Feb. 20, Mike Hammer, the senior diplomat at the U.S. Embassy in Havana, and Brian Burch, the U.S. ambassador to the Holy See and a top Trump ally, met in Rome with Archbishop Paul Richard Gallagher, the No. 2 in the Vatican’s influential Secretariat of State, to discuss the role of the Catholic Church.
That same day, Hammer and Burch met a group of Latin American ambassadors to the Vatican to discuss “how to work with the church to support the Cuban people’s desire for economic opportunity and freedom.”
During the meeting, Hammer told the diplomats that the Cuban regime would fall “in a matter of days” and that the U.S. was in talks with Raúl Guillermo Rodríguez Castro, a grandson of former president Raúl Castro, as well as a second person, according to a person familiar with the meeting.
But in the short term, Hammer said, the U.S. needed to get humanitarian assistance — food, clothes, blankets and other basic items — into Cuba and distributed. If this aid was sent through the Cuban government, he claimed, it would never reach the people who need it.
Humanitarian aid as a topic of conversation was not a surprise. Last month, the White House pledged $6 million in Cuba aid to be distributed through the Catholic Church, on top of $3 million previously announced to assist in the aftermath of Hurricane Melissa, which struck the island in October.
But people familiar with the relief effort said that as assistance has arrived in recent weeks, much of it has been stranded at the docks for extended periods because of a lack of fuel for transport trucks.
“On one hand, they want to deliver humanitarian assistance to those in need through the Catholic Church because [it is] present in the whole of the island,” said a person familiar with the relief effort. “But at the same time, that assistance cannot be delivered because of the blockage of oil. You need to lift those sanctions because it’s been like this for a couple of months.”
Miami Archbishop Thomas Wenski, who has been assisting with humanitarian aid in Cuba for three decades, said his diocese was one of the first groups working on the island after Hurricane Melissa to distribute aid. Wenski called it significant that the Cuban government did not object to the U.S. funding for humanitarian assistance, which has not often been the case — especially since it arrived in cardboard boxes with an American flag clearly visible on the side.
“They swallowed hard and said they’d take U.S. government assistance,” Wenski said.
Most of the containers of supplies were arriving at the Mariel port in Havana, but the church, he said, lacked semitrucks with fuel to transport supplies across the island.
Church leaders managed to coordinate the arrival of one shipment by sea in Santiago, at the opposite end of the island, but it required more “intensive cooperation” from the government, Wenski said. The archbishop received photos showing church volunteers in Guantánamo distributing the aid on motorized tricycles and wheelbarrows.
Another person familiar with the effort said the church had also been forced to deploy donkeys. “It’s like a Mad Max movie,” Wenski said.
The Rev. Rolando Montes de Oca, a Catholic priest presiding over three parishes outside Havana, said he received a shipment of food from the U.S. that he distributed to dozens of elderly and disabled people in his congregations who have been relying on the church for meals. During power outages, church volunteers had to cook with coal, he said.
Montes de Oca said he is saving his last bit of gasoline to pick up and deliver aid, or other essential travel; he estimates his reserves will get him through Easter, on April 5, but not much longer. To celebrate Mass at the two parishes farthest from him, he rides his bike nine to 11 miles.
The State Department, in a statement, did not specifically address the logistical delays, but blamed “tragic conditions” in Cuba on “the regime’s incompetence, failures, and abuses.” It also said that the U.S. “works closely with the Church on various aspects of our Cuba diplomacy.”
In Rome, a clear message was conveyed to Hammer during church meetings: The oil blockade is hurting relief efforts.
Eight days later, Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez arrived at the Vatican on an elevated mission as “special envoy” of President Miguel Díaz-Canel. He met personally with Leo and Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican’s secretary of state.
Very little was publicly disclosed. But according to a person briefed on the meetings, Rodríguez invited Leo to Cuba and requested his urgent assistance to alleviate the crisis caused by the U.S. blockade. Less than three weeks later, Cuba announced it would release 51 prisoners as a gesture of goodwill toward the Vatican.
Rodríguez spoke separately at the Vatican with Parolin in a meeting that was more “concrete,” the person briefed said, including a discussion about the need to intercede with the Americans and explain just how grave the situation had become for average Cubans.
That same day, Hammer and Burch also met Parolin. One of the people familiar with the talks said the Vatican is looking for a resolution in Cuba that would be “not as traumatic” as what happened in Venezuela, when U.S. military forces seized President Nicolás Maduro. That operation elicited words of concern from Leo about Venezuelan self-determination and sovereignty.
The most delicate topic remains the suggestion by some in the Trump administration to replace Díaz-Canel. The person briefed said the Vatican has tried to push discussions toward a solution for the humanitarian crisis first, looking for an easing of or specific exemptions to the oil blockade while encouraging both sides to discuss “the evolution of the sociopolitical context.”
The Vatican declined to comment on any of the conversations beyond restating its opposition to the U.S. embargo. Asked about Cuba by journalists earlier this month, Parolin said: “We … did what we had to do for Cuba. We met with the foreign minister and took the necessary steps, always with a view to a dialogue-based solution to existing problems.”
Schmidt reported from Mexico City. Stefano Pitrelli in Rome contributed to this report.
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