By Anita Snow. Associated Press. October 12, 2001.
The Washington Times
HAVANA -- The message of sympathy and healing was familiar, but the
venue gave it a special meaning.
Five days after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the United States,
Cuba's top Roman Catholic church leader, 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," Cardinal 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. Cardinal 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 Mr. 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," Cardinal 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 Cardinal 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, Cardinal 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 Cardinal 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 Cardinal Ortega and other Cuban
priests to work camps.
The son of a sugar worker and a housewife, Cardinal 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, Cardinal Ortega attended public schools and
studied for the priesthood before completing his studies with the Fathers of
Foreign Missions in Quebec.
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 Mr. 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 across
the island. Hundreds of foreign priests, mainly from Spain, were expelled; the
number of priests dropped from 670 to fewer than 200.
Cardinal Ortega and many other Cuban priests were sent to military-run
agricultural work camps during the few years they operated. Cardinal 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, Cardinal 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 was 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, Cardinal 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 nongovernmental organizations.
In November 1994, Pope John Paul II named Cardinal 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 Cardinal 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 Cardinal 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," Cardinal 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 Cardinal 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."
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