[Cardenal] is both naive and subtle in his notes on Cuba [In Cuba]. It is as if St. Francis of Assisi were jotting things down, and St. Francis Borgia were editing the jottings. He praises the Cubans … and is impressed because everyone gets the same rations, just as in wartime England, or in China until the food situation eased in the 1960's. He repeats three or four times that over 100,000 people voluntarily gave blood for disaster victims in Peru (in the U.S. press, only Castro's gift of a pint was mentioned—by Time). But he also reports, on good authority, that there are 7,000 political prisoners in the Havana jail. (pp. 14, 16)

He puts down what people say exactly….

He is wonderfully clear-sighted: "While we are getting less religious, you are getting more so," he tells Paz Espejo, and she replies, "The greatest danger of the revolution is theocracy...