Cuba is currently experiencing a severe economic and energy crisis with widespread shortages and blackouts due to a U.S.-led embargo designed to bring about regime change. Since everyday Cuban citizens are suffering, however, the Trump administration has agreed to provide humanitarian aid—if it is distributed by the Catholic Church, Cáritas Cuba and other nongovernmental organizations.

• U.S. and Cuban Catholic leaders met in Havana on Tuesday to coordinate the distribution of $100 million in U.S. food, medical supplies and humanitarian aid to inhabitants of the island nation.

This will make the Cuban people reliant on the Roman Catholic Church for their survival instead of the Cuban Communist Party.

• The Catholic Church has the strongest national networks in Cuba outside the government, so partnering with the Conference of Catholic Bishops of Cuba is an effective strategy to weaken the Cuban Communist Party without creating chaos on the island.

Yet this strategy also has risks.

• Pope Leo xiv has vocally criticized the Trump administration’s attempts to secure the U.S. border and to bring about regime change in Iran. Like Pope Francis before him, Leo believes U.S.-style capitalism is an evil to be fought and is trying to fundamentally transform the world economy into a Catholic corporatist system.

Catholic Cuba will not necessarily be a greater friend of the U.S. than Communist Cuba. In fact, Bible prophecy indicates Catholic Cuba will become an existential threat to the U.S.

Deuteronomy 28:52 shows that, if Americans turn from God, their enemies “shall besiege thee in all thy gates throughout all thy land, which the Lord thy God hath given thee.”

• Other prophecies indicate that America’s primary end-time enemy will be a union of 10 Catholic nations or nation groups in Europe (Revelation 17:12).

To effectively besiege the U.S., this Vatican-led superpower will need to control America’s gates, including Cuba, Greenland and the Panama Canal.

• More than 40 percent of U.S. seaborne trade goes to and from ports in the Gulf of America. This makes the narrow gap between Cuba and Florida and the narrow gap between Cuba and Mexico extremely important to U.S. trade. Closing these choke points could cripple the U.S. economy.

President Trump realizes Cuba’s significance. That is why he is trying to liberate it from communism. Yet he is blind to prophecies about the Holy Roman Empire. To understand these prophecies, read Gerald Flurry’s article “The Deadly Dangerous U.S.-Cuba Deal.”