The Miami Herald.
Posted at 9:48 a.m. EDT Friday, October 5, 2001
Cuban cardinal slowly helps church regain lost ground
By Anita Snow. Associated Press Writer
HAVANA -- (AP) -- The message of sympathy and healing was familiar, but the
venue gave it a special meaning.
In the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the United States, Cuba's
top Roman Catholic churchman, Cardinal Jaime Lucas Ortega y Alamino, celebrated
a special Mass in the Havana cathedral. Despite long-standing acrimony between
the U.S. and Cuban governments, Cuban citizens and government leaders condemned
the attacks. President Fidel Castro even offered medical help to the island's
historical foe.
"With pain we rebel against a calculated, evil act that involves so
many innocent men and women,'' Ortega said during the Sept. 16 memorial service.
"Injustice always angers us, but justice won't be re-established with hate
and vengeance.''
It was the latest sign of the Cuban Catholic church's dramatic evolution
under the 64-year-old archbishop of Havana. Ortega, who in 1998 saw the first
papal visit to the Caribbean island, has worked hard to regain ground the church
lost after the 1959 revolution that brought Castro to power.
Earlier this year, he consecrated the first parish church built in Cuba in
more than four decades.
"Enter through the doors of the Lord, giving thanks for his
sacrifices,'' Ortega intoned then, amid applause from the parishioners. He was
resplendent in a golden miter and vestments, as he opened the doors of St.
Joseph parish just blocks from Communist Party headquarters.
"The Lord has built us a house!'' young people sang, banging steel
drums as they marched into the stucco sanctuary while church bells rang.
The ceremony in late June was another victory for Ortega, who has negotiated
modest but meaningful openings with a formerly atheist government.
"This is truly a historic event,'' said the Rev. Fidel de Jesus
Rodriguez, the parish's priest. The government had approved the construction and
sent representatives to the consecration, he noted.
Today, Ortega is among several cardinals in Latin America mentioned as
possible successors to Pope John Paul II, now 81. But his beginnings were modest
and his climb up the ecclesiastical ladder was arduous.
Just as Ortega began his priestly vocation, the new communist government was
weakening an already feeble Cuban church. It closed parochial schools, expelled
foreign priests, even sent Ortega and other Cuban priests to work camps.
The son of a sugar worker and a housewife, Ortega was born on Oct. 18, 1936,
in the sugar mill town of Jaguey Grande, in the central province of Matanzas.
When he was 5, his family moved to the provincial capital of Matanzas, an
important coastal city. There, Ortega attended public schools and studied for
the priesthood before completing his studies with the Fathers of Foreign
Missions in Quebec, Canada.
By the time he returned to Matanzas for his 1964 ordination, Cuba's Catholic
church -- never strong to begin with -- was seriously weakened. Previously
identified with the wealthy, the church took a vehemently anti-communist line
shortly before Castro declared Cuba to be socialist in 1961.
The revolutionary government soon accused prominent Catholics of trying to
topple its new leader. Public religious events were banned after processions
became violent political protests.
The government nationalized the more than 150 Catholic schools island-wide.
Hundreds of foreign priests, mainly from Spain, were expelled; the number of
priests dropped from 670 to fewer than 200.
Ortega and many other Cuban priests were sent to military-run agricultural
work camps during the few years they operated. Ortega spent a year at one camp
beginning in 1966.
Afterward, he returned to Matanzas province, where the priest shortage
required him to travel among multiple churches to celebrate Mass, perform
baptisms, and officiate at weddings. He formed a youth group and organized a
summer camp for young people.
During this busy period, Ortega, a practiced pianist, composed music for a
Cuban Mass, and traveled to Havana weekly to lecture on theology.
He was consecrated as bishop for the diocese in western Pinar del Rio
province in 1979 and named archbishop of Havana in 1981.
During those years, beginning in 1974, the Cuban government was officially
atheist. Believers of all faiths were banned from the Communist Party, the
military and some other professions.
Nevertheless, Ortega helped rebuild the church infrastructure in and around
Havana, establishing new parishes -- often in people's homes -- and renovating
more than 40 existing churches.
The archbishop also set up Caritas of Havana, the Catholic relief charity's
first office in Cuba. That planted the seed for Caritas of Cuba, now among the
country's most successful non-governmental organizations.
In November 1994, Pope John Paul II named Ortega Cuba's first cardinal in
more than three decades and the second in the island's history.
Just two years before, the government dropped its constitutional references
to atheism starting a gradual thaw in church-state relations that culminated
with the 1998 papal visit.
When honoring Ortega during a Boston visit in 1997, Cardinal Bernard Law
described his colleague as "a sign of hope to a world that so desperately
needs those signs.''
While Ortega refrains from publicly confronting the Cuban government, on
trips abroad he expresses disappointment that change has been modest.
John Paul's visit to the island "stirred hope in the hearts of
Cubans,'' Ortega was quoted as saying during a 1999 visit to San Francisco. But,
he added, the "more positive and open climate of 1998 now seems a thing of
the past.''
Although Ortega has made no headway in reopening Catholic schools, he has
had limited success in gaining access to Cuba's mass media, receiving occasional
approval to broadcast messages on government radio.
In one such message, he noted the government's decision after the papal
visit to once again make Christmas an official holiday. That was, he said, "a
joy for the church and for the Cuban people.''
Cuba recalls own terror, resents place on U.S. terrorism list
By Anita Snow. Associated Press Writer.
HAVANA -- (AP) -- The black and white photographs of people in mourning bear
testimony to what Cubans view as the deadliest act of terrorism committed
against their country -- an airliner bombing that killed 73 people.
One image on display at the Interior Ministry Museum shows teen-agers filing
past caskets draped with Cuban flags. Others show an older man comforting his
sobbing wife, and hundreds of thousands crowding Havana's Revolution Plaza to
remember the victims killed 25 years ago this week.
"We have an explosion aboard, we are descending immediately!'' reads
the transcript of the pilot's last words with the control tower in Seawell,
Barbados. "Seawell, CU-455, we are requesting immediate landing... . We
have a total emergency!''
After last month's terror attacks in the United States, Cubans recalled
their own experience with terror on Oct. 6, 1976, when a bomb planted by
opponents of Fidel Castro's government blew up the Cubana de Aviacion airliner.
The government has called a rally for the anniversary on Saturday to
remember those who died.
Several government officials were among the 57 Cuban victims. But most were
civilians, including members of the island's fencing team. Five Koreans and 11
citizens of the South American nation of Guyana also died.
After the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the
government sponsored a rally to express solidarity with Americans. It also
condemned the attacks but added: "It is not possible for our people to
forget that for more than 40 years they have been the victim of just such
actions promoted from the same American soil.''
Few Cubans know their country remains on the U.S. State Department's
terrorism watch list with six other nations: Iran, Iraq, Syria, Libya, North
Korea and Sudan.
Cuba deeply resents being on the list, especially because it says it stopped
actively supporting armed struggle in Latin America and elsewhere more than a
decade ago. Earlier, Cuba did provide training, arms and funding to leftist
rebels around the world.
"Our country speaks with total moral authority in saying that it would
never undertake a terrorist act,'' Cuba's U.N. Ambassador Bruno Rodriguez told
United Nations members Monday.
U.S. officials concede there is no evidence Cuba has sponsored specific
terror acts in recent years. The nation remains on the list for three reasons:
U.S. fugitives on the island, Cuba's contacts with Colombian guerrilla groups,
and several Basque separatists who are in the country.
"When Cuba is proclaimed a terrorist state with this type of argument
it really hurts the credibility of the American government,'' Cuban Foreign
Minister Felipe Perez Roque earlier this year told Radio Progreso, a moderate
Cuban-American station in Miami.
Perez Roque said both the presence of Basque separatists on the island and
Cuba's contacts with Colombian rebels were approved by the Spanish and Colombian
governments. Cuba has sponsored meetings between Colombian representatives and
guerrillas as part of that nation's peace process.
In the radio interview, Perez Roque didn't talk about the several dozen
American fugitives living in Cuba. But in the past, Cuban officials have noted
the country has no extradition treaty with the United States, which severed
diplomatic relations in 1961.
The American fugitives include former Black Panther Joanne Chesimard, who
lives here under the name Assata Shakur. She was convicted in 1977 of killing a
New Jersey state trooper.
Cuba has its own problems trying to extradite people it wants to try for
terrorism.
Panama earlier this year refused Havana's request to extradite over
Cuban-born Luis Posada Carriles, 72, for trial in the airliner attack and a
series of bombings in 1997 on tourist sites. Posada Carriles has denied any role
in the airliner attack but has admitted involvement in the bombings.
He has been jailed since Nov. 17 in Panama, where he was arrested after
Castro arrived there for a regional summit and declared that his old nemesis was
in the country plotting to kill him.
Two Venezuelan men were convicted in the jetliner bombing and each sentenced
to 20 years imprisonment in Venezuela. A fourth man, Cuban exile Orlando Bosch,
spent 11 years behind bars in Venezuela during a lengthy judicial process but
was ultimately acquitted.
Copyright 2001 Miami Herald | 
