CUBA: Rest & Recuperation

After he left the clinic where he had been treated for a head injury last month, Manuel Cardinal Arteaga, 73, Archbishop of Havana, maintained an austere silence while Cuba buzzed with rumors that he had been pistol-whipped during a search of his palace by agents looking for hidden revolutionaries or weapons (TIME, Sept. 7). Last week the cardinal shed a little light on the mystery; in a pastoral letter he said he had been the victim of “a common criminal attempt” by men whom he did not know, but whom he wished to forgive “in the Christian way.” That established that he had indeed been slugged, but left wide open the more important question as to who the sluggers were. Havana police, who had been standing firmly on the official story that the prelate had been hurt in a fall, hastily began a new investigation. Cardinal Arteaga, again wrapped in dignified silence, departed for New York and sailed aboard the Italian liner Andrea Doria for three months’ rest and recuperation in Rome.