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John Paul's impact on Cuba
remains in religious sphere
By Vanessa Bauzá,
Havana Bureau. Florida
Sun-Sentinel, April 3 2005.
HAVANA · For Cuban Catholics who
refused to renounce their religion during
decades of officially imposed atheism, Pope
John Paul II's historic 1998 trip offered
a sublime confirmation of faith.
Many like Marta Vizoso, who lives in Havana's
sprawling Soviet-style community of Alamar
where atheism was once required as a condition
for residency, remember the pope's visit
as the moment Cuba's Catholics "regained
our voices."
"It was something we had awaited for
many years," said Vizoso, 69, whose
snug apartment is one of Cuba's 2,000 "mission
homes," where bible studies and Sunday
Masses are regularly held.
John Paul II visited 130 countries and
confronted regimes around the world, including
Soviet rule in his native Poland, where
many say he was pivotal to the fall of communism.
But in few countries were the pope's homilies
and gestures as highly anticipated or imbued
with as much meaning as Cuba.
It was a five-day pilgrimage some thought
could transform a four-decade revolution.
The pontiff's captivating, islandwide Masses
galvanized Cuba's faithful bringing messages
of family unity, political reconciliation
and respect for individual and religious
freedoms.
He urged Cubans to be guardians of their
own future and not to fear demanding their
basic rights.
"There was a connection in that the
pope came from a communist country he was
able to understand Cubans' situation,"
said Orlando Marquez, spokesman for the
Cuban Conference of Bishops. "I know
many people who got closer to the church
after his visit and started to see it in
an unprejudiced light after many years of
atheist propaganda."
Now, the pope's legacy lives in the soup
kitchens that operate out of some churches,
the religious magazines circulating across
the island and the twinkling trees that
were openly displayed just weeks before
his visit, when President Fidel Castro made
Christmas a national holiday for the first
time in 28 years.
But like the six-story mural of Jesus Christ
that was dismantled in Revolution Square
a day after his departure, the pope's visit
seems to have left few footprints outside
the religious sphere.
Despite widespread expectations, the relationship
between the Catholic church -- the most
powerful independent institution on the
island -- and state remains distant and
at times tense.
"People thought the pope's visit would
wash away the church's obstacles,"
said Monsignor José Siro of the western
province of Pinar del Rio, one of Cuba's
most active and outspoken parishes. "The
honeymoon period did not last long. What
has remained is hope and the community's
reaffirmation of faith."
Castro's government has not granted key
church requests such as giving priests greater
access to the state run media and allowing
parochial schools to reopen.
No new Catholic churches have been built
in more than 40 years and with construction
delayed on a new seminary outside Havana,
a ceremonial cornerstone blessed by the
pope remains stored at the capital's archdiocese.
Though the government allowed 40 foreign
priests and nuns to come to Cuba in the
weeks leading up to the pope's visit, dozens
of others are still awaiting government
permission to work here, Marquez, the spokesman
said.
Despite a boost in church attendance in
the years immediately following the pope's
visit, the number of Cuban churchgoers has
leveled off. In Havana and its adjoining
province, for example, only about a thousand
more people were baptized in 2002 than in
1997, a year before the pope's visit.
Marquez estimates that only about 5 percent
of Cubans attend Mass regularly, a striking
difference from Poland, for example, where
80 percent of the population is estimated
to be Catholic.
Manuel Lopez Arrieta a priest at the Church
of Regla, across Havana Bay, said the pope's
visit was "like a party where afterwards
you clean up and everything remains the
same."
"What's missing is to deepen the dialogue,"
he added. "A dialogue cannot take place
with historic baggage, it has to flow. And
all dialogue always implies concessions."
After Cuba's 1959 revolution, Castro, who
attended Jesuit school as a boy, expelled
more than 100 priests on grounds that they
were aiding counter revolutionary movements
and defending the interests of the elite.
More than four decades later, Cuba's Catholic
bishops say a "subtle struggle"
against the church persists. In a 2003 document
titled "The Social Presence of the
Church," the bishops wrote that Cuba's
government still views the church as an
institution that can "steal strength
and energy from the revolution."
Havana's 2003 crackdown on 75 peaceful
dissidents exacerbated the uneasy coexistence
between church and state, leaving some clergy
uneasy in their role of defending human
rights while not being seen as overstepping
their religious mission. Cuba's bishops
have said they are neither aligned with
Castro's government nor the island's opposition
movement, but have urged for clemency for
the political prisoners.
The Office of Religious Affairs, which
acts as a liaison between the Cuban government
and the island's churches and synagogues,
declined a request for an interview.
In a 2002 interview with the South Florida
Sun-Sentinel, Caridad Diego, director of
the office, said the church's message "should
be a religious message, not a political
message. What preoccupies us is for religious
beliefs to be manipulated against the revolution."
Longtime Catholics see a long road, with
significant accomplishments behind them,
but also many obstacles ahead.
For retired army doctor Jorge Romero, the
pope's visit "represented the awakening
of Cuba's Catholic soul."
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