Vatican secretary of state calls Cuba prisoner release ‘a sign of great hope’

Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin meets with Cuba President Miguel Díaz-Canel on June 20, 2023, at the Vatican. / Credit: Vatican Media

Vatican City, Jan 16, 2025 / 09:30 am (CNA).

The Vatican’s top diplomat has called the gradual release of 553 prisoners in Cuba “a sign of great hope” at the beginning of the Catholic Church’s jubilee year.

Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican’s secretary of state, also commented on U.S. President Joe Biden’s commutation of death sentences for 37 death row inmates, expressing hope that there will be more “gestures of clemency” from governments throughout the 2025 holy year.

Jubilee years in the biblical tradition included the liberation of slaves and the forgiveness of debts, as described in the Book of Leviticus, which proclaimed liberty and restoration every 50 years as a divine act of justice and mercy.

The Cuban government’s announcement of the prisoner release dated Jan. 14 cited “the spirit of the Ordinary Jubilee of 2025” and noted Pope Francis’ mediation in the negotiations, in which the U.S. State Department agreed to remove Cuba from its state sponsor of terrorism list to secure the release of the political prisoners.

“It is significant that Havana authorities linked this decision directly to Pope Francis’ appeal,” Parolin said in an interview published by Vatican News during his visit to France.

Pope Francis has repeatedly called for “gestures of clemency” during the holy year, the cardinal added, particularly in the jubilee’s papal bull Spes Non Confundit, which specifically asked governments to implement forms of amnesty or pardon, as well as programs to help former prisoners reintegrate into the community.

“I propose that in this jubilee year governments undertake initiatives aimed at restoring hope; forms of amnesty or pardon meant to help individuals regain confidence in themselves and in society; and programmes of reintegration in the community, including a concrete commitment to respect for law,” Francis wrote in the papal bull.

“In every part of the world, believers, and their pastors in particular, should be one in demanding dignified conditions for those in prison, respect for their human rights and above all the abolition of the death penalty, a provision at odds with Christian faith and one that eliminates all hope of forgiveness and rehabilitation,” the pope added.

Parolin noted that the 2024 year “closed with the commutation by the president of the United States of dozens of death sentences to life sentences, and with the news that Zimbabwe had abolished capital punishment.”

One day before the start of the Church’s jubilee year on Christmas Eve, Biden commuted the sentences of 37 federal inmates on death row, changing their sentences from execution to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Since then, two prisoners have rejected the commutation in the belief that it could put them at a legal disadvantage in appealing their cases on the claim of innocence.

The African nation of Zimbabwe approved a law abolishing the death penalty on Dec. 31, 2024, resulting in the resentencing or commutation in about 62 prisoners. Globally, 113 countries have fully abolished capital punishment, according to Amnesty International.

“We hope that this 2025 will continue in this direction and that the good news will multiply, especially with the truce for the many conflicts still ongoing,” Parolin said.