Sadly, precious little good has come from the Vatican in the past 2-3 years or so; while Pope John Paul II has been admirably steadfast in some of his longstanding convictions, there’s been every sign in recent years — with the Vatican’s failure to meaningfully address the sex abuse scandals and its shameful failure to recognize the moral realities in Iraq and Palestine as prominent examples — that the Holy Father has lost the ability to absorb new information or take a fresh look at problems whose moral outlines have become starkly clearer in recent times. But this report carries a little of the Pope that many Catholics still know and love: a rebuke to Fidel Castro’s latest brutal crackdown. Here’s the letter in Spanish; I’ll post the English translation if I can find one.