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Cuban opposition leader José Daniel Ferrer said a wooden cross fell from the wall of his home on Thursday, October 22, turning a moment of alarm into a renewed resolve to support Cuba’s political prisoners.
In a Facebook post, Ferrer wrote that he was sitting down to eat, feeling feverish and unwell, when he heard a loud crash. His wife shouted a warning: The cross had come loose from the wall, knocking objects off a small table as it fell.
The cross, he explained, had accompanied him into exile.
A cross delivered on the day of his exile
According to Ferrer, the Rev. José Conrado Rodríguez received the cross in Poland and later gave it to the Rev. Camilo de la Paz, a priest in Santiago de Cuba.
Father Camilo brought it to the airport on October 13, 2025, the day Cuban authorities sent Ferrer from Mar Verde prison into exile in the United States.
Ferrer said state security officers tried to prevent the priest from delivering it. Father Camilo insisted on seeing at least Ferrer’s family and eventually handed the cross to his wife, who passed it to Ferrer aboard the plane.
Ferrer had been released from prison in January 2025 as part of a Vatican-mediated release process, then imprisoned again in late April. He was serving a four-and-a-half-year sentence at Mar Verde when authorities sent him and his family out of the country.
He described Father Camilo as “a man of God and a great friend,” deeply concerned about the suffering of the Cuban people.
“Eat and get back to work”
The crash brought another incident to mind, Ferrer wrote: the death of a priest in Guayaquil, Ecuador, on Saturday, October 17.
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The Rev. Patricio Sánchez Molinari, a Redemptorist priest, died after a wooden cross fell on him during Mass. He was the pastor of Our Lady of Perpetual Help Church in the south-central part of the city, where the accident occurred.
Ferrer said the moment made him question his own wish to eat and lie down while political prisoners and other Cubans endured what he described as a prolonged ordeal of suffering, hunger and abandonment.
His response to himself was simple: Eat, then get back to work.
He also used the post to criticize what he described as the destructive effects of the far left, Islamist radicalism, apathy, a lack of solidarity, cowardice and a failure to uphold Christian commitments.
Keeping political prisoners at the center
Ferrer, the leader of the Patriotic Union of Cuba, known as UNPACU, spent years in prison before his forced departure. Days after arriving in Miami, he discussed his exile in an exclusive interview with Otaola.
Since leaving Cuba, he has promoted efforts to help political prisoners and their families. His latest account comes amid continuing allegations of abuse in Cuban prisons, including a reported beating of political prisoner Roilán Álvarez.
The story of the cross also adds a personal detail to Ferrer’s account of his departure: his allegation that state security officers tried to stop a priest from delivering a religious object to him before he was forced to leave the country.
Do you believe the Catholic Church in Cuba is doing enough for political prisoners? Share your thoughts in the comments.
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