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By William E. Gibson, Washington Bureau
Chicago Tribune
January
19, 1998; 6:07 a.m. CST
Fidel Castro
once seemed such a promising young Catholic.
The man who will play host this week to Pope John Paul II has carried on a
roller coaster relationship with the Roman Catholic Church dating back more than
a half-century to his days as a brilliant-but-rebellious Jesuit student. The man
who went on to ban Christmas grew up in a solid Catholic household headed by a
strict father and a deeply religious mother.
At age 17, Castro confronted a matter of life and death, a dramatic episode
that a devout person might have called a religious experience. Seeing his
mentor, a Jesuit priest, being dragged down a swift-flowing mountain stream,
Castro plunged in to the rescue.
"He was the strongest swimmer in the school, and when he saw I was
drowning, he just jumped in and saved my life," Rev. Armando Llorente
recalled years later.
On shore, priest and boy knelt to pray. Then they wept together.
That same boy grew up to seize control of Cuba, declare it an atheist
Marxist state, ban Catholics from high posts, confiscate church property, shut
down Catholic schools, and expel priests and nuns. He has alternately spurned
and reached out to the church ever since, leading to the pope's tour of Cuba,
which is scheduled to begin Wednesday.
Rarely has a pope been greeted by a host with such a checkered religious
past. History shows Castro has his reasons for extending a warm welcome.
The ups and downs along this wild ride reveal Castro's political agenda and
his world-class ability to manipulate people and events. The only consistent
quality in the seeming contradictions is a cold, hard political cunning.
"For ordinary citizens of Cuba, religion is incredibly important.
Everyone who looks at the island sees spirituality or religion on the rise,"
said William LeoGrande, an expert on Cuban history at American University in
Washington. "But for Castro, this is clearly politics writ large."
At his victory speech upon entering Havana in 1959, the moment of his
greatest triumph, Castro was blessed with a remarkable occurrence that left
religious Cubans in awe. Someone released three white doves from a cage as the
revolutionary leader addressed a crowd at Camp Columbia, the military
headquarters of just-departed dictator Fulgencio Batista outside Havana.
The huge crowd gasped and cheered when one of the doves, long a symbol of
peace, alighted on his shoulder and stayed there as he spoke. No one could have
scripted a more dramatic demonstration.
To many Cubans, the dove signified divine acceptance of the guerrilla
leader. Even today in revolution-weary Cuba, many people still recall the white
dove.
The reassurance that believers felt that day was quickly crushed. At the
height of his intolerance in 1961, Castro's regime herded a bishop and 130
clergymen onto a boat and sent them out of Cuba. The Vatican responded by
excommunicating him.
Cuban church members were denied jobs, excluded from government posts,
harried and ridiculed. Soap operas on government-run television depicted priests
as lechers or fools. Church services became pitiable, sparsely attended
gatherings. Young Cubans were taught that religion was a trivial pursuit,
irrelevant in Cuba.
"Even practicing Catholics did not baptize their children or teach them
about God, lest their future be jeopardized," said Rev. Jose Somoza, a
Cuban-American priest in Washington. "So today, many Cubans do not know
much about Jesus Christ or the Virgin Mary or basics of the Catholic faith."
Yet Castro stopped short of banning the church as was done in China and
other communist countries. He found it most useful to keep the church
functioning but contained through social stigmas and harassments. He never
allowed it to become a rival power but avoided turning believers into martyrs.
Castro's declaration of atheism and his regime's repression of the church
are only part of his puzzle. The other parts help explain why he ventured to the
Vatican in 1996 to court the pope and why he hopes to gain from the pope's
visit.
At heart he was never very religious, Castro readily acknowledges.
Young Castro quietly respected his mother's faith and he put up with the
Jesuits. He would dutifully arise at dawn, pull on his school uniform, attend
church services and dazzle teachers with his remarkable memory. He could recite
long passages from the Bible and was especially fascinated by biblical
depictions of war and conquest.
Castro admired the self-sacrifice and discipline of the Jesuits. At the same
time, he showed flashes of rebellion, disdained the dogma of the church and
accused some priests of falling under the sway of Spain's right-wing dictator,
Francisco Franco.
"On the one hand, he saw his teachers as good guys, just like in
`Goodbye Mr. Chips,' and on the other hand, he accused them of being minions of
Franco, anti-progressive," said Thomas Quigley, an adviser on Latin America
for the U.S. Catholic Conference, a church service group.
Castro has expressed some pride in the fact that the name "Fidel"
derives from the Latin word "faithful." He has called San Fidel "my
saint."
When it suits him, Castro will weave religious themes into his rhetoric.
He sometimes compares Christian ideals with those of communism. At times,
he has compared his struggles in a hostile capitalist world to the earthly
persecution of Jesus.
"When Christ's preachings are practiced, it will be possible to say
that a revolution is occurring in the world," Castro once said in a
televised speech.
As for his rescue of the drowning priest in 1943, Castro shrugs it off as an
act of man, not faith. "Yes, I saved Llorente's life," he recalled
years later. "I would have done it for anyone, not because he was a priest."
His tolerance of religion depended on the pragmatics of getting and keeping
power.
"From the mid-'60s on, you could not say the church represented any
kind of a threat to him," Quigley said. "And there were radical
developments elsewhere in Latin America that made Castro realize the church may
not have to be repressed, that it may be an ally."
Castro embraced a radical church movement called "liberation theology,"
which sided with the poor and campaigned for social justice. Periodically he
tried to make common cause with priests and bishops outside Cuba who crusaded
for social change.
Meeting with foreign church leaders in 1985, Castro wistfully expressed a
hope that he would someday meet the pope, a wish fulfilled 11 years later.
Wearing a double-breasted blue suit, Castro arrived at the Vatican gates in
1996 aboard a motorcade that featured a rooftop machine gun. Italian leftists
cheered the arrival of the excommunicated communist leader. Cuban exiles
protested.
Observers at the scene say Castro seemed awed by his 35-minute audience with
Pope John Paul II. The two—each a formidable figure of the 20th Century—talked
in Spanish for 35 minutes across a desk in the pope's private library.
Castro, according to Vatican aides, talked about Cuba's place in the
international community, in effect steering the conversation to the sore subject
of the U.S. economic embargo against Cuba. The pope talked about human rights
and normalization of church activities in Cuba, pressing for freedom of worship.
The conversation frames their conflicting agendas for the pope's Cuba tour.
Castro hopes for a papal condemnation of the U.S. embargo, the existence of
which the Vatican has long opposed. The pope hopes for greater religious freedom
and human rights in Cuba.
Many Catholics hope the pope's visit will set off a chain reaction of events
that could undermine Castro's regime.
"I'm really looking forward to this trip," LeoGrande said, "because
here you have two world historical figures, both thinking they will come out on
top, and one is going to be wrong."
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