{"id":2299,"date":"2010-07-08T17:54:27","date_gmt":"2010-07-08T17:54:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/news\/2010\/07\/church-brokers-deal-to-free-52.php"},"modified":"2010-07-08T17:54:27","modified_gmt":"2010-07-08T17:54:27","slug":"church-brokers-deal-to-free-52","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2010\/07\/church-brokers-deal-to-free-52","title":{"rendered":"Church Brokers Deal to Free 52 Cuban Dissidents"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>VATICAN CITY (RNS) The Roman Catholic Church has brokered a historic deal to release 52 political prisoners in Cuba, following three-way talks between Cuban President Raul Castro, Spanish Foreign Secretary Miguel Angel Moratinos and Havana Cardinal Jaime Ortega.<br \/>\n&#8220;Five prisoners will be released immediately and will be able to travel to Spain accompanied by their families,&#8221; said a statement from the Cuban church. &#8220;Another 47 will be freed and will be able to leave the country over a period of three or four months from now.&#8221;<br \/>\nSix more of the jailed will be relocated to prisons closer to their families; Spain has agreed to take in all the exiles.<br \/>\nThe agreement represents the largest number of political prisoners freed since ailing dictator Fidel Castro allowed 3,600 to leave for the United States in 1979.<br \/>\nThe release of a sizable chunk of the 190 political prisoners estimated to remain in Cuban jails comes barely two weeks after Vatican foreign secretary Archbishop Dominique Mamberti&#8217;s visit to the island nation, where he held talks with Raul Castro.<br \/>\nThe Catholic Church has been increasingly influential in winning concessions in Cuba. Ahead of Mamberti&#8217;s visit, Ortega had negotiated the release of a sick prisoner, transfers for 12 inmates held far from families and better medical care in jails.<br \/>\nOrtega described dialogue with the communist regime as a &#8220;process&#8221;<br \/>\nthat would continue with &#8220;agility.&#8221;<br \/>\n&#8212; Richard Allen<br \/>\n<em>Copyright 2010 Religion News Service. All rights reserved. No part of this transmission may be distributed or reproduced without written permission.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>VATICAN CITY (RNS) The Roman Catholic Church has brokered a historic deal to release 52 political prisoners in Cuba, following three-way talks between Cuban President Raul Castro, Spanish Foreign Secretary Miguel Angel Moratinos and Havana Cardinal Jaime Ortega. &#8220;Five prisoners will be released immediately and will be able to travel to Spain accompanied by their&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":58,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2299","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ 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between Cuban President Raul Castro, Spanish Foreign Secretary Miguel Angel Moratinos and Havana Cardinal Jaime Ortega. &#8220;Five prisoners will be released immediately and will be able to travel to Spain accompanied by their&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2010\/07\/church-brokers-deal-to-free-52","og_site_name":"Beliefnet News","article_published_time":"2010-07-08T17:54:27+00:00","author":"aroan","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2010\/07\/church-brokers-deal-to-free-52","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2010\/07\/church-brokers-deal-to-free-52","name":"Church Brokers Deal to Free 52 Cuban 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