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The Marxist leaders of Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Colombia all offered statements honoring the legacy of the late Pope Francis on Monday, embracing him as a friend to their cause.
The most vocal praise came from Cuba, where dictator Raúl Castro – who once joked he would return to the Catholic Church if Pope Francis “kept it up” – called him a “dear friend” and credited him with making the Church more palatable to the Communist Party leadership. Figurehead President Miguel Díaz-Canel similarly lauded Pope Francis as “unforgettable” and credited him with making Cuba a priority in his service as head of the church.
The Vatican announced the death of Pope Francis on Monday at the age of 88, shortly after making a surprise appearance during Easter services on Sunday. The pontiff had endured a severe respiratory illness that had hospitalized him for much of February and March and was in the process of recovery at home when he passed.
Pope Francis served as the head of the Roman Catholic Church since 2013 and was the first Latin American pope, as well as the first to be a member of the Jesuit Order. His passing prompted messages of mourning and celebration of his work in the Church from heads of state around the world, including non-Christian leaders such as Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, and Islamist Turkish strongman Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
In Latin America, leaders of the region’s most repressive states remembered Pope Francis as a “pope of the people” who sought to reconcile their brutal regimes with the free world.
“Rest in peace, dear friend,” mass murderer Raúl Castro wrote in a statement published by Granma, the official newspaper of the Cuban Communist Party.
People walk past a portrait of late Pope Francis at the Caridad del Cobre church in Havana on April 21, 2025. ( YAMIL LAGE/AFP via Getty Images)
“You were a man of integrity and consistency, who reciprocated with affection and good fortune the human relationship we forged,” Castro continued. “I keep fond memories of the meetings we held and I greatly appreciate your affection for the Cuban people and personal contribution to establish a fraternal dialogue and understanding in the relations between Cuba and the Holy See.”
The communist coup that seized power in Cuba in 1959 relied heavily on the eradication of Catholic influence on the country through the use of firing squads to kill priests and the mass exile and abuse of nuns, as well as the shutdown of churches and Catholic schools. Stories of Cuban regime agents publicly beating priests and dragging them into the nation’s notoriously violent jails for expressing compassion for peaceful anti-communist dissidents remain common.
The violence against the local Catholic Church did not stop Pope Francis from using the Vatican as a mediator to encourage the United States to enable more communist violence against the Cuban people by removing sanctions and enriching the regime. President Barack Obama, who spearheaded efforts to enrich the regime during his tenure, credited Pope Francis with encouraging him to embrace the Cuban Communist Party in 2014.
“His Holiness Pope Francis issued a personal appeal to me and to Cuba’s president, Raul Castro,” Obama said at the time, referring to a deal to trade the freedom of American Alan Gross for that of the remaining members of the “Cuban Five,” a spy ring responsible for the Cuban regime’s killing of four Americans.
Granma described the tenure of Pope Francis as “one of the greatest moves to bring closer the Catholic Church and the nation, based on a relationship of respect and mutual sensibility,” noting that Pope Francis visited the island nation in 2015.
“During his stay in the greatest Antilles he held a meeting with Fidel [Castro] who, although it was a private visit, marked an important moment for the papal visit to Cuba due to its elevated symbolic content,” Granma recalled.
That visit featured outsized repression on the part of the Cuban regime to ensure that pro-democracy dissidents were not allowed any time with the pope. One such activist, identified as Zaqueo Báez, managed to approach the pope’s motorcade during one of the events of the visit. Báez shouted the word “freedom” near the pope, resulting in regime agents brutally beating him in front of the pope and whisking him away to prison. The incident was caught on video.
“I don’t have any news that any detentions happened. I have no news,” the pope said on the flight out of Cuba when asked about arrests and police brutality during his visit. Pope Francis did not meet with any pro-democracy dissidents during the visit and refused to condemn Cuba’s deplorable human rights record, telling reporters, “there are some countries and also some European countries where you cannot make a sign of religion, for different reasons, and on other continents the same.”
Díaz-Canel, like Castro, issued a statement describing “profound lament” at Pope Francis’s passing.
“The displays of affection and close proximity that he transmitted to our compatriots were always reciprocated by the Cubans,” Castro’s underling wrote. “We recall his visits to Cuba with affection, as well as his words of affection that he dedicated to our country in his messages.”
Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro, a close ally of the Cuban regime, similarly honored Pope Francis on Monday during his weekly television program With Maduro+.
“Today he has departed from this life and left us an immense legacy, still to be known and, above all, to be carried into practice through the world’s Catholic people,” Maduro said. “It is up to us all to assume the labor of elevating Pope Francis, who walked with the humble, defended persecuted migrants, and the poor of this planet.”
“His papacy was an ethical guide that inspired us to walk with the most vulnerable and struggle for social justice,” Maduro added. “We had a people’s pope, a pope truly representative of the legacy of Christ the Redeemer.”
Maduro also recalled that Pope Francis presided over the canonization of the first Venezuela pope, José Gregorio Hernández.
The pope granted several audiences to Maduro at the Vatican and attempted, unsuccessfully, to mediate between Maduro’s violent socialist regime and the fractured Venezuelan opposition.
In Nicaragua, a nation whose communist regime has declared war on Catholicism, dictator Daniel Ortega and wife Rosario Murillo issued a statement acknowledging “differences” with the Church but honoring Pope Francis.
“Our relationships, as believing, devout, and loyal Nicaraguan believers of the doctrine of Jesus Christ, were difficult, fraud, unfortunately influenced by adverse circumstances,” the dictatorial couple wrote. “We admire his [Pope Francis’s] travels throughout the world promoting peace and intending to build a Church committed to the duty and responsibility to create concord, via the indispensable Christian solidarity and brotherhood.”
In Colombia, President Gustavo Petro, a radical Marxist who began his political career as a member of a terrorist organization, lamented Pope Francis’s death as that of a personal friend.
“He perfectly understood his role as a spiritual leader in the great struggle for life,” Petro continued. “On the greedy causes of extinction. His encyclicals will go down in history if we are capable of constructing a humanity that defends its greatest good: Life.”
Vatican City will host a funeral for Pope Francis on Saturday to honor his memory.
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