A brief commentary  from Cardinal O’Malley’s visit to Cuba and his meeting at the Embassy of the Order of Malta in Havana.(1)

Below are excerpts from his blog at the web address:

http://www.cardinalseansblog.org/2009/08/28/visiting-cuba/

"While in Havana we also met with the ambassador to the Order of Malta. The order of Malta has diplomatic relations with 60 countries, including Cuba. The Order is involved in programs to help the elderly and to provide medicine and food for people there.

There is a large group of Cuban members of the Order in Miami, but they actually have an ambassador in Cuba itself, a Polish gentleman named Przemyslaw Häuser. He invited us one night for dinner at his embassy, and we had some very interesting discussions. He was a very close friend of Pope John Paul II and Cardinal Stanislaus Dziwisz, Pope John Paul II’s secretary for many, many years. In Poland, he was a filmmaker who made films about the Vatican and about John Paul II."

(1) Sean Cardinal O'Malley, OFM Cap, is Archbishop of Boston, and a Conventual Chaplain Ad Honorem of the American Association of the Order of Malta