An Office that is unnecessary, and that never should have been

An Office that is unnecessary, and that never should have been / Mario
Lleonart
Posted on July 7, 2013

The members of our church are victims of a constant process of pressure,
intimidation, blackmail, coercion and even recruitments in the midst of
a psychological Cold War, whose ultimate goal would be my long-awaited
resignation or recall as pastor.

This shows the double standard of this regime, whose agents, in the
arbitrary detention that they put me in on Wednesday, October 12, 2011,
and in an effort to pressure me so that I would sign an official written
warning, to which of course I did not agree, they officially threatened
me so that I would focus on my pastoral activity and leave aside my
social concerns, as though these were not two sides of the same coin.
The sad thing is that, in practice these are the same agents, sheltered
by the highly overrated political Office in Havana, who hinder and
obstruct everything I try to do in my community, basically.

But the epitome that, as pastor I find myself in the painful decision to
denounce, is that that Office, not satisfied with this dirty policy of
constant interference to my pastoral work, which moreover has not yet
given the expected result, taking advantage of its power to grant or
reject permits, extend or withdraw privileges, in extreme cruelty, and
in the unforgivable stance of "making the believers fight," in order to
interfere with our evangelistic mission to the people (John 17, 21), has
extended permissions and privileges to another congregation
unfortunately fitting, to the honored Evangelical Pentecostal work known
as "Good News," so that, in a first phase, it would prohibit them from
any type of relationship, not only with me or my family, but with any
member of our church; they were forbidden to invite us to their
activities, or to attend those to which we cordially invited them.

After this discriminatory and segregational posture towards the
brothers, worthy of the words of the Second Epistle of the apostle John
(verses 9-10) concerning the tyrannical leadership of Diotrophes; the
sad thing is that this congregation with privileges easy to see for our
community and everyone knows at what cost, has passed through a sad
phase which consists of putting a first priority on evangelistic work
for which there is more than enough land among our people ("the harvest
is plentiful but the workers few"), an aggressive proselytism and
without dissimulation obviously addressed to the members of our local
church in order to grasp whichever of our brothers it can (that in
Evangelical Cuban slang is known as "fishing in another's pond"),
without taking into account either the most minimum rule of ethics, and
in which sadly they already have reaped some fruits.

Someday the history of this sad period of Christianity in Cuba will be
written, in which our case unfortunately does not constitute an
exception, and it will be strong enough to discover information and
facts that will leave the skeptics astonished. Then perhaps we will know
how much damage this Office caused, what excess, and what never should
have been, to the church in Cuba, "Although its gates shall not prevail
against it."

In the meantime I have the most precious thing, that God who is my help
and strength and who is also my witness of these brief accusations that
constitute only a point at the tip of the iceberg that is the violation
of religious freedom in Cuba.

Translated by: Hombre de Paz

20 May 2013

Source: "An Office that is unnecessary, and that never should have been
/ Mario Lleonart | Translating Cuba" -
http://translatingcuba.com/an-office-that-is-unnecessary-and-that-never-should-have-been-mario-lleonart/