President Raul Castro is ready to consider resolving the thorny issue of Cuba’s jailing of political dissidents, though talk about releasing them was off the table for now, a Catholic Church official said. “This issue was talked about and I believe both sides are ready and want to resolve it and we hope this will be done. I believe this will be done,” Cuba’s Episcopal Conference leader Archbishop Dionisio Garcia said after an unprecedented discussion with Mr Castro on Wednesday.
Asked whether the talks might lead to an agreement to free the political prisoners, Garcia responded cautiously. “There will be a process and this process has to start with small steps and these steps will be made,” he said. “We hope that the conversation will go in that direction.” Garcia was accompanied at the meeting in Mr Castro’s office by Cuban Cardinal Jaime Ortega, who also said the “positive meeting” with the President raised hopes of a breakthrough.
Ortega said that while “we hope” political dissidents will be released, “regarding the sick ones, we expect it,” for humanitarian reasons. Dissident groups say there are over 200 political prisoners in Cuban jails. —AFP
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Church warns cell scientists
ALESSANDRA RIZZO
ROME
Catholic Church officials said on Friday the recent creation by resea-rchers of the first synthetic cell can be a positive development if correctly used, but warned scientists that only God can create life. Vatican and Italian church officials were mostly cautious in their first reaction to the announcement from the United States that researchers had produced a living cell powered by manmade DNA.
They warned scientists of the ethical responsibility of scientific progress and said that the manner in which the innovation is applied in the future will be crucial.
“If it is used toward the good, to treat pathologies, we can only be positive” in our assessment, Monsignor Rino Fisichella, the Vatican’s top bioethics official, told state-run TV.
“If it turns out not to be ... useful to respect the dignity of the person, then our judgment would change.” “We look at science with great interest. But we think above all about the meaning that must be given to life,” said Fisichella, who heads Vatican’s Pontifical Academy for Life. “We can only reach the conclusion that we need God, the origin of life.” Catholic Church teaching holds that human life is God’s gift, created through natural procreation between a man and woman. —AP