Cuban blogger Claudia Cadelo, informs through Twitter that Guillermo Fariñas has been discharged from hospital, and is at home.

There were no details on his current condition, but we will update the post as soon we obtain further them.

UPDATE: Italian news agency ANSA informs in Spanish details his discharge from hospital. It states that Fariñas will have to use a wheelchair due to a neuropathy caused by his 135 day long hunger strike (his 23rd) and that he still suffers from a clot in one of his carotids that will take years to treat.

The opposition activist told the reporter that because of his motor limitations, he will continue his work as an independent journalist from his home.

We are happy to see Fariñas out of hospital, albeit not completely healthy. We will monitor his situation, and wish him a speedy recovery. And, we are most grateful to this great Cuban for his fearless fight, for risking his own life for the release of Cuban political prisoners.

by Yoani Sánchez for The Huffington Post

The Catholic Church in Cuba seems determined to play a new social role in the face of the inevitable changes that lie ahead for the island. Senior church leaders finally condemned the "repudiation rallies" targeting the Ladies in White, and expressed support for their demands to release of political prisoners. In an unusual gesture, the cardinal himself met with them and offered assurances that he had obtained a commitment from the authorities to end the repressive actions against their peaceful group. In a show of further support, he celebrated mass at Santa Rita's, where the wives, mothers and daughters of the political prisoners, and the women who support them, pray every Sunday, before marching from the church to demand freedom.

As in the other Latin American countries once colonized by Spain, the Catholic church on the island carries enormous weight with the movement for civic engagement. Its influence exceeds that of the syncretic cults with African elements, and the increasingly energetic and numerous Protestant denominations that have come to Cuba, almost all of them from the United States. Relations between the church hierarchy and the revolutionary government have gone through different stages since January 1959. By the sixties the conflicts had already become very sharp, particularly due to atheism being a part of the official ideology, as well as the confiscation of the religious colleges. Entering a church came to be seen as a counterrevolutionary act, and those aspiring to Communist Party membership knew they could not even baptize their children. For more than twenty years Christmas celebrations were forbidden and many churches were left without priests.

In the late eighties, relations began to thaw, after the publication of the book "Fidel and Religion" by the Brazilian priest, Frei Betto, and contacts with the liberation theologians. Ultimately, in 1991, in an unexpected turn of events, the Fourth Communist Party Congress agreed to accept people with religious beliefs into the Party. In 1998, John Paul II visited Cuba and expressed himself clearly: "Let Cuba open itself to the world, and let the world open itself to Cuba." As a result of this historic visit, the church regained a part of its social role.

In the more than 50 years of the current government, representatives of the church have assumed different positions to confront the authoritarian abuses of the government. Some demand, with more or less restraint, that the authorities respect all human rights; others request, offering something more than their cheeks, that they be given small concessions in exchange for their unlimited obedience. At the heart of the Catholic church - among priests and laity - confrontational and complacent positions coexist.

Now, in mid-June, the church is celebrating its Tenth Catholic Social Week and Dominique Mamberti, the Vatican's Foreign Minister, is in Cuba to attend. Given the fragile situation of the country, hopefully he will make critical pronouncements which the government may find difficult to assimilate. Two years from now Cubans will commemorate the four-hundredth anniversary of the arrival on the island of the image of Cuba's patron saint, the Virgin of Charity; the Pope himself is expected to visit. Although his visit certainly won't have the same impact as the coming of his predecessor, his presence will unleash many hopes. Few are waiting for the appearance of the Virgin to put Cuban affairs to rights. It is hoped that flesh-and-blood human beings, driven by faith or by the interests of the nation, will try to reach an agreement that will pull the country out of the stagnation in which it is mired. The Catholic Church understands that it cannot remain indifferent in the face of these exigencies.

Marc Masferrer, that magnificent Cuban-American blogger who has kept a very close eye on the situation of all Cuban political prisoners, clarifies his previous post that we reproduced:

After some earlier confusion on my part, it does appear Antonio Villarreal Acosta is the first Cuban political prisoner to be transferred to a medical facility, under an arrangement worked out between the Castro dictatorship and Catholic Church officials, according to the Spanish newspaper La Razon.

Villarreal, imprisoned since the "black spring" of 2003 and serving a 20-year sentence, was transferred to a psychiatric hospital, his nerves reportedly shot by the abuses he has suffered while in jail. Although at least one dissident questioned whether the move only shifted the location of where the dictatorship tortures Villarreal, according to the newspaper report.

As best as I can, I will try to keep track of which prisoners are transferred to hospitals or to jails closer to their homes as a gauge of the true significance of the new order between church and state in Cuba.

On 20 May 1902, Cuba began a new life as an independent nation. From that date on, Cubans started to build the Republic for which Céspedes, Agramonte, Maceo, Gómez, Martí and other leaders in the fight for Cuban independence from Spain, had fought. This was system based on the rule of law, the equality of all citizens before it, checks and balances of power, the protection of individual rights and freedoms, and government through freely elected representatives.

Despite a colonial regime that for centuries kept Cubans away from any sort of self-government, despite some pervasive, and contrarian to the republican spirit social institutions like slavery, despite the authoritarian system of command and obedience fostered within the Liberation Army; Cubans progressed for half a century pursuing and partially achieving that republican ideal. This adventurous social experiment was suspended on 10 March 1952, with Fulgencio Batista’s coup d’état, and finally died abruptly seven years later, victim of what was then hailed as a providential rescue of the Republic, but ended up being its complete opposite: personal despotic rule, inequality before the law, and the systematic violation of all human rights that has lasted more than five decades.

Why do we march?

The Cuban “revolution” has been, throughout all these decades, an excellent propaganda campaign designed to hide Castrism’s unpresentable reality and the people’s growing rejection, shared today by a clear majority, of the system. To reveal this reality and to support those who are trying to change it, is one of our campaign’s most important tasks.

We invite you to march with us on this 20 May 2010 to celebrate the founding ideals of the Cuban Republic, and also the gallant courage of those who defend them in the island. That is why we are going to march for the political prisoners, for the late Orlando Zapata, for Guillermo Fariñas, the Ladies in White, the Support Ladies, the oppositionists, the Cuban independent journalists and bloggers. We will try to have them marching side by side with us.

It will probably be an entertaining virtual march, but not a frivolous or useless one. We Cubans need to learn how to express our desire for change, and to make it public in an encompassing and coordinated fashion. This is a rehearsal and a show of support for those who will be marching in many cities around the world commemorating this date.
How to take part

The march will take place all day on 20 May 2010. You must be a Twitter registered user to participate, and use the #20mayo hashtag for your tweets. The more you do it, the better. All who use the hashtag will “parade” using their own avatar and showing their last tweet. Again, it is an all day event and the starting point is here:

Virtual March #20mayo for the Republic of Cuba

http://isparade.jp/127355

One good example is the recent campaign #OZT: I accuse the Cuban government. In barely a month, through Twitter and the Internet, a handful of activists have managed to gather almost fifty thousand signatures condemning the death of Orlando Zapata and supporting the release of the political prisoners in Cuba. Among them are hundreds of public figures ranging from Pedro Almodóvar, Mario Vargas Llosa and Fernando Savater, to Roberto Saviano and Anthony Appiah. The media effect of this campaign has been overwhelming and has successfully affected the Cuban reality. Three prominent young intellectuals, members of Cuba’s Artists and Writers Union, UNEAC, have decided to add their names, knowing the consequences which may befall them. Though few in number, they have a kind of immunity: were they to face repression, the subsequent wave of solidarity would encourage more people to get off the fence, causing major problems for the regime.

This has been the great lesson of Yoani Sánchez, learned by both the Ladies in White and cyberactivists-in-exile: Use the new media and the opportunities of the Internet to develop a win-win scenario of media transparency; no matter how it responds — whether with indifference or repression — the government is seen to be weak.