Letter From Cuba
Garofalo, Thomas
~ nowledge among the Cuban people of this month's papal visit can be attributed almost entirely to the church's own door-to-door campaign, conducted in all ten dioceses by...
...In fact, Cuba's history of socialism may contain benefits for the church's own program of social justice...
...Anthony Trollope, traveling in the country in 1859, remarked that "Roman Catholic worship is at a lower ebb in Cuba than almost anywhere else...
...Inventamos algo" or "we'll figure something out," is a phrase frequently employed by Cubans as they confront a difficulty, whether it be how to move the occupants of a broken-down Lada to their destination or how to make a single chicken stretch to feed a family of eight...
...It is only one aspect of that freedom...
...Still, the church will need to be resourceful if it is to broaden its outreach...
...The right to worship is not freedom of religion," Havana's Cardinal Ortega has said...
...Showing his visitors several boxes of literature that volunteer layworkers would be distributing house to house, he explained that state limits on church activities made the work more difficult...
...Another pastor, a Colombian priest who wished to remain anonymous, agreed...
...nowledge among the Cuban people of this month's papal visit can be attributed almost entirely to the church's own door-to-door campaign, conducted in all ten dioceses by volunteer laypeople and religious...
...In theory, the system was created for the common good, without leaving anyone behind...
...As Bishop Jose Siro Gonzalez of Pinar del Rio noted during my recent visit to Cuba: "I can say, without childish enthusiasm or Cuban vanity, that there is tremendous hope among the people for the visit of the Holy Father...
...We feel very deeply that our mission is good...
...According to one church official "the Cuban people today can be described in three words: uprooted, discouraged, and fragile...
...Many of the people who come to ask intercessions of the Virgin of Charity do not know Christ," said Father Jorge Palma, pastor of the sanctuary of Cuba's patron saint...
...Money isn't the problem," he said...
...Today, officials seem to face the future with pragmatism, accepting the fact that while they cannot operate with complete freedom, they have patience that some day they will...
...It is silent, anonymous...
...And it seems to be working: In November, the government admitted twenty-eight priests and twentynine sisters from Spain, Colombia, and Haiti...
...When asked what hopes he had for his priesthood, Adonis Gonzalez, a twenty-year-old seminarian in Santiago, replied: "I want to help the people live their faith better, so that they can improve the whole society...
...So, while church officials in Cuba maintain that the government has not been especially repressive recently, it is clear that the church has no choice but to steadily press for greater freedom to fulfill its mission...
...Commonweal | | January 16,1998...
...In fact, they are more likely to criticize the customary journalistic focus on conflict, which often sets church authority off against the state...
...But perhaps because of necessity, the Cuban church has grown adept at spreading the word...
...Tae population here is probably only about 10 percent Christian," another priest told me, "and only 1 percent of the people actually practice....People come to Mass, but they know little about Catholicism...
...Yet the church's public caution in criticizing the government reveals a strong desire not to sour the current constructive dialogue...
...He has traveled widely in Latin America and recently visited Cuba...
...The shrine is located in the mining village of Cobre, a few miles from Santiago de Cuba, the capital of the province of Santiago...
...The question remains: hope for what...
...As a result, church officials are not eager to criticize the current system publicly...
...This eastern end of the island is poorer and less developed than the rest of Cuba, a fact that is reflected, according to Palma, in the people's faith experience...
...Both the Cuban people and their pastors will need to exhibit such patience and resourcefulness long after the pope's visit...
...Thus, the Cuban bishops' November 1997 pastoral letter, "Let Us Give Each Other Fraternal Peace," encouraged Cubans to expect the Holy Father with hopeful hearts: "The pope comes to announce to today's Cuban the truth about Jesus Christ and the human person, so that we might have hope...
...What we don't achieve today we will achieve tomorrow...
...For many, their faith is a faith of fear...
...Recently, the government has dramatically improved its treatment of religious believers...
...But even if the government were to become more welcoming, the island's roughly 240 priests and 400 nuns would have a hard time reaching its 11 million inhabitants...
...If it were easy, we wouldn't be here...
...Distribution of the bishops' November pastoral was limited...
...One church official went as far as to say that the "centralization of government authority makes certain things easier for us...
...They don't wish to jeopardize progress, thus their reticence with the media...
...Asked to compare the predicament of the church in Cuba to that of his home country, Colombia, where political murders reached more than thirty thousand in the last ten years, he said, "This is much more difficult...
...q~here is a moral and ethical force behind the church that is fundamental in today's efforts," another Catholic official told me...
...Thomas Garofalo works with Catholic Relief Services...
...The problem is that the government won't allow us to purchase the things we need: paper, printing equipment...
...These people are uprooted...
...Palma, nonetheless, was preparing his congregation for the pope's visit...
...Less than 10,000 copies per diocese were printed...
...We are faced with a state that wants to limit our ability to preach and celebrate our faith...
...The pope's visit will focus on the evangelization of a people who have long stood out in Latin America for their lack of formal religious devotion...
...In the past, the Cuban government systematically persecuted Catholics, denying them access to education and jobs, and even subjecting them to so-called reeducation programs...
Vol. 125 • January 1998 • No. 1
