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.c The Associated Press
By CHARLES J. HANLEY
HAVANA (AP) -
In stop after stop, addressing young parents, country kids, the cultural elite
in Havana, Pope John Paul II has returned to the same theme on his
groundbreaking visit: Cuba needs Roman Catholic education.
In a land where Catholic schools have been shuttered for more than three
decades, the school "option'' is emerging as a goal the church apparently
hopes is achievable in some way under a liberalizing communist system.
The pope took his message Friday evening to the neoclassical halls of the
University of Havana.
In sonorous, thickly accented Spanish, the pontiff told a gathering of
leading academics, writers and other intellectuals, including President Fidel
Castro, that Cuban "cultural institutions'' - clearly meaning universities
- should work with the church in a "fruitful cultural dialogue.''
Reminding his listeners that this premier Cuban university, Castro's alma
mater, was founded by the church's Dominican order, he said its roots show "its
vocation to be a fountain of wisdom and freedom, an inspiration to faith and
justice.''
But Castro has already let the pope know, in public, of his distaste for
Catholic education. And his culture minister flatly rules it out.
Today, the fourth day of the historic first papal visit to Cuba, John Paul
offers an open-air Mass in the eastern city of Santiago dedicated to Cuba's
patron saint, the Virgin of Charity, a potent symbol of national pride and
patriotism.
Later, he visits leprosy and AIDS patients at a shrine and clinic on
Havana's outskirts.
The climax comes Sunday morning, when the pope celebrates Mass in Havana's
Plaza of the Revolution, offering Holy Communion in a vast space flanked by
towering images of communist revolutionary hero Ernesto "Che'' Guevara and
the Sacred Heart - a temporary nine-story portrait of Christ.
"I haven't been to Mass in many years. Many years,'' craggy-faced
retiree Felicito Gonzalez, 74, told a reporter as he waited for a bus in Havana.
"But I'll be there Sunday. The whole city will be there.''
The pope began Friday with an open-air Mass dedicated to Cuban youth in
Camaguey, a city on Cuba's central plain. An estimated 50,000 people attended,
including thousands of young people bused in from country towns.
In his homily, John Paul declared that a Catholic education would aid in the
"sowing of virtue and spirituality for the good of the church and of the
nation.''
He first raised the issue in a sermon on the family Thursday, scolding the
government for having deprived parents of the choice to send their children to
religious schools.
The government does not have "the right to take the place of parents,''
he said.
Like the church itself, Catholic schools before Castro's 1959 revolution did
not have deep and extensive roots through Cuban society. They were primarily
havens for a white elite in a mostly mulatto and black nation.
After the revolution, many upper-class families left the country, the church
hierarchy openly resisted Castro's socialist changes, and the new government
ordered a halt to Catholic education. Today, only catechism classes on church
grounds are allowed.
In recent years, Castro has loosened some strictures on religion. Cuban
churchmen now clearly consider achieving more "space'' in education a key
to building a broader following for a weak church. Although perhaps 40 percent
of Cubans are baptized Catholics, probably no more than 5 percent attend Mass
regularly.
As he often does, the pope spoke only in the most general terms about the
values of a Catholic education, making no specific demands.
In his "World of Culture'' address on the university campus Friday
evening, he seemed to raise his aim higher, to instilling Catholic values at the
level of higher education.
"The church and the cultural institutions of the nation need to meet in
dialogue and so work together to develop Cuban culture,'' he said.
Just Wednesday, at the pope's arrival ceremony, Castro pointedly raised his
own memories of a Catholic education - of how, he said, he was taught
intolerance for other religions, and of how he would ask his teachers why no
black children attended the schools.
"I have not forgotten the unconvincing answers I was given,'' Castro
told the pope.
In an interview this week with The Associated Press, Cuba's culture
minister, Abel Prieto, addressed the issue more directly, saying the government
considers education something that "strategically we have to maintain under
state control.''
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