In the final days of Joe Biden’s administration, the Vatican has brokered yet another deal with Cuba.

We’ve been here before. In 2014, Barack Obama announced that the United States would restore diplomatic ties with Cuba after 53 years—after a personal appeal from the pope. The Vatican had worked behind the scenes for months, hosting secret meetings and using cardinals as go-betweens. In his booklet Great Again, Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry writes: “For America, this was a disgraceful surrender.”

Now the Catholic Church has done it again. President Biden announced yesterday that Cuba would be removed from the list of state sponsors of terrorism. He revoked a national security memorandum Donald Trump put in place in 2017 that restricts financial transactions with organizations linked to the Cuba government. He is also trying to stop people filing lawsuits against Cuba over property seized in the 1959 revolution.

Being on the list bars Cuba from receiving U.S. aid and arms exports, and it discourages other companies and businesses from trading with Cuba. After Biden’s announcement, Cuba promised to release 553 of its estimated 1,000 political prisoners.

Pope Francis and the Vatican once again played a key role in brokering the deal. White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre called the deal “an understanding with the Catholic Church.” Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel had promised the prisoner release in a letter to the pope earlier this month. Cuba’s Foreign Ministry said the prisoner release happened against the backdrop of “close and fluid relations with the Vatican state” and that Cuba has “a respectful, frank and constructive relationship with the Vatican and the supreme pontiff, which facilitates decisions such as the one recently taken.”

As in 2014, cardinals acted as negotiators and messenger boys. Cardinal Seán O’Malley, the archbishop of Boston until last summer, wrote today: “Over the past several years, I have carried messages from Pope Francis to the presidents of the United States and Cuba.” He credited “Pope Francis’s patient and persistent efforts” as “an underlying force in bringing about this historic agreement.”

This deal again bails out a repressive regime. Cuba arrested hundreds of protesters in the summer of 2021. Half a million people have fled the island. Human Rights Watch stated: “The government continues to repress and punish virtually all forms of dissent and public criticism, as Cubans endure a dire economic crisis affecting their rights.” Cuba is still a safe haven for wanted terrorists and criminals, including Joanne Chesimard; Charles Lee Hill, who murdered a policeman in the 1970s; Ishmael LaBeet, who murdered eight in the U.S. Virgin Islands; and 10 leaders of a Colombian rebel group. It supports repressive regimes across Latin America, like that of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.

Many on the right have been scathing in their criticism of Joe Biden. “The Biden administration continues on its quest to leave as much wreckage behind on its way out the door as possible,” wrote Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. “Cuba should not be removed from the list of state sponsors of terrorism. The Communist dictatorship in Cuba is one of the most repressive regimes in the world and has supported anti-American governments and groups around the world for decades.” Sen. Rick Scott called it “Joe Biden’s parting gift to dictators and terrorists around the world.”

Even the Florida branch of the Democratic Party condemned the deal. “Generations of Cuban-Americans in Florida have told stories about the cruelty of the Castro regime—currently led by Raúl’s hand-picked successor—and the dangers they faced in escaping to freedom in America,” wrote its chair, Nikki Fried. “We condemn in the strongest terms Cuba’s removal from this list, as well as any possible lifting of economic sanctions, and call on the Biden administration to reverse course immediately.”

Yet few are directing any criticism at the pope and the Vatican bureaucracy that worked so hard to make it happen.

Just days before, Biden awarded Pope Francis the Presidential Medal of Freedom “with distinction.” He is the only person Biden has given this distinction. Since 1990, the only other people awarded the medal “with distinction” are Ronald Reagan, Colin Powell, Pope John Paul ii and Joe Biden himself.

Biden had planned to travel to Italy last weekend, where he was scheduled to meet with the pope. Presumably, he intended to award the medal then. However, the trip was canceled due to the Los Angeles fires. Instead, the Biden administration announced the award after a phone call with the pope.

“Above all, he is the people’s pope—a light of faith, hope and love that shines brightly across the world,” the administration’s statement said.

But has the pope really been a supporter of freedom and a friend to America?

One of his most consistent messages is that climate change is deadly and that it is America’s fault. He has called capitalism “a new tyranny,” rather than mankind’s most successful economic system ever for lifting people out of poverty. He has called for the U.S.-led global financial system to be replaced with something more socialist. To help do this, he has said that “there is urgent need of a true world political authority.”

If American capitalism is a “new tyranny,” then wouldn’t the pope be fighting against it?

He has been far less critical of Cuba’s Communist government. He said, “I am a Communist, and so too is Jesus.” Cardinal Agostino Casaroli, who died in 1998, pushed for rapprochement of Communist regimes, while the Vatican’s secretary of state once said, “Catholics who live in Cuba are happy under the socialist regime.”

Sixty percent of Cuba’s population is Catholic. Freedom House noted: “Cuba’s one-party Communist state outlaws political pluralism, bans independent media, suppresses dissent, and severely restricts basic civil liberties. … The regime’s undemocratic character has not changed despite a generational transition in political leadership between 2018 and 2021 that included the introduction of a new constitution. …

“[However, the] Roman Catholic Church has enjoyed an expansion of its pastoral rights, including periodic access to state media and the ability to build new churches. Protestant and evangelical groups tend to face greater restrictions, though they too have experienced improved conditions in recent years.”

High-ranking Catholics, including the head of the Jesuit order in Cuba, have been persecuted. But on the whole, the pope’s Cuban diplomacy has won his church a much greater presence in Cuba. In 2019, the Catholic Church even opened its first new church since the Cuban Revolution.

But there’s more to this than freedom of worship for Cuba’s Catholics. As the largest island in the Caribbean, Cuba is one of the world’s most strategic pieces of real estate.

“For the Catholic Spanish Empire, Cuba was the single strategic port that served two entire continents,” wrote Mr. Flurry.

Donald Trump wants to secure America’s trade routes, most notably with his talk of acquiring Greenland and the Panama Canal. Here the Vatican is moving into one of the other crucial locations of controlling U.S. trade. At the same time, the European Union recently signed a deal with the Latin American trade bloc mercosur.

“The Bible prophesies of a deadly economic siege that is going to strike America,” wrote Mr. Flurry. “It will cause one third of the terrifying damage that will be suffered in the Great Tribulation. That siege is about somebody controlling ‘trade routes’—so it is not difficult to see how Cuba could play a strategic role in that. …

“The German-led European Union is the seventh and final resurrection of the Holy Roman Empire—that same Holy Roman Empire which, centuries ago, used Cuba so powerfully to fuel its wars. If the present resurrection were to move into Cuba again, it would be well positioned to carry out these kinds of attacks. The advantage is that it can do so within a cloak of secrecy, since Cuba is essentially a police state with tight controls on information. Think of the control that it could have. Think of how valuable Cuba has been to America’s enemies in the past! You need to watch what is happening in Cuba.”

The Catholic Church has persisted for a decade now in bringing Cuba and the U.S. closer, and weakening economic sanctions against Cuba. It is laying the groundwork for a deadly siege of the United States. To understand more of where this is leading, read Chapter 4, “The Deadly Deal With Cuba,” in our free booklet Great Again.