Saturday, September 19, Pope Francis arrived in Havana and put his stamp of approval on communism in Cuba.

In one of his speeches, the Pope called “normalization” between Cuba and the United States an example for the entire world.

Today Francis will travel to the United States and bless the communists here, too.

Presumably Francis will then continue to travel around the world and bless communism wherever it can be found.

If it is the Roman Catholic Church’s practice for a Pope to speak for the little people, then by extension all true-believing Roman Catholics in Cuba endorse communism in Cuba.

Thus it follows that when he leaves the United States, Francis will have tacitly spoken for all American Roman Catholics and again put his, and their, blessing on Cuba’s government.

In his remarks Francis called communism “a system of growth” that had prevailed over “the forever-dead system of groups and dynasties.”

It matters not to the Pope, it seems, that Cuba’s government still holds hundreds of political prisoners, no doubt many of them brother Catholics. No comment has been made on this issue.

So far as is known, none of the American presidential candidates — several profess to be Catholics — have broached the subject of people in Cuban prisons, nor about the fact that Cuba’s government is run by communists, with its inherent lack of freedoms.

Like religion.

Even before he left his mansion in Europe to walk as brothers with Cuban communists, Francis had already praised American President Barack Obama, as highly as possible without awarding Obama sainthood.

Francis is right in his praise of Obama, but he should also reach back and praise a fellow Catholic for his role in saving Cuba for communism.

President John Kennedy, in a secret agreement, promised the Soviet Union and Cuban dictator Fidel Castro that the United States would never invade or threaten Cuba, thus taking a huge step in preserving the communist dictatorship for going on now for 53 years.

(For those who graduated high school since the big push for better education that began in the 1960s, the above was the result of the 1962 “Missile Crisis.” As an aside, Kennedy threw in the dismantlement of U.S. missile basis in Turkey.)

Give Obama credit for not keeping secret this latest bonanza for communist Cuba, although we don’t know yet what Obama has promised Russia about Ukraine and Syria, or Iran.

Ever the gentleman, Francis asked Cuban President Raul Castro to “convey my sentiments of particular respect and consideration to your brother Fidel.”

As one of the few opinion writers who will admit mistakes in predictions, let me say that when Obama took office in 2009 I expected him to follow Fidel Castro’s example of announcing a year after the captured control of the Cuban government that he was a communist. Instead, Obama has operated close to the vest for nigh on six years.

Maybe Obama has been waiting for the Pope to have the honors.

L.E. Brown, Jr. is a writer based in Magnolia, N.C. Contact him at [email protected].