Catholic Church
By KATHERINE CORCORAN
Associated Press Writer / March 21, 2008
HAVANA (AP) -- Pope Benedict XVI donated the collection from a Holy
Thursday Mass to a Cuban orphanage -- a gesture seen here as a sign the
Roman Catholic Church wants to be a key moral force in Cuba's future.
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On the heels of a historic leadership change and a high-level diplomatic
visit from the Vatican, Benedict's nod to Cuba is the latest example of
how the church and this communist government have taken small, quiet
steps toward healing a once-adversarial relationship.
"It shows that the pope is in tune with Cuba and understands where it is
going ... and that the visit and declarations of (Cardinal Tarcisio)
Bertone were more than just diplomacy," said Aurelio Alonso, a Cuban
academic who studies the church's influence. "It was an important
gesture at a very important moment in time."
While the church needs government permission to expand its social and
educational role, the Cuban government sees it as a moral compass amid
drifting values and a search for a national identity, church observers
say. And good relations with the church help rehabilitate Cuba's image
worldwide.
Discussions between Bertone, the Vatican's secretary of state, and new
president Raul Castro last month touched on political prisoners in Cuba
and Cubans jailed for spying in the United States. Bertone also publicly
reiterated the Vatican's long-held position that the U.S. embargo
against Cuba is "ethically unacceptable."
"In my opinion, the church wants to exercise its role as a mediator"
between Cuba and the outside world, said Enrique Lopez Oliva, a
representative in Cuba of the Commission for the Study of the History of
the Church in Latin America.
"The issue of prisoners is already on the table. And I have no doubt
that the pope will bring up the issue of Cuba with President Bush in
April when he visits Washington."
Cuban church officials dismissed any political significance in the
pope's donation to the Golden Age orphanage in Havana, noting that it's
something the pope does every Holy Week, choosing a different country
each time.
But they agreed that the Cuban church's relationship with the government
is improving, and that Bertone's visit helped.
"The communication is more fluid," said Archbishop Dionisio Garcia in
the eastern city of Santiago.
The church is seeking official status, specifically unlimited access to
news media and the reopening of Catholic schools, which were
expropriated after the revolution nearly 50 years ago.
The Cuban government has not officially responded to the request, but
for months has been giving the church -- without fanfare -- regular
drips of latitude.
A Catholic seminary in Havana is the first being built since the
revolution. The government has recently allowed foreign students to
attend Mass in a public medical school. And it has let churches teach
nonreligious classes in subjects such as languages and computers and
expand charity programs such as elderly day care.
Most significantly, the state televised Bertone's Mass from Havana's
cathedral plaza, and the Communist Party newspaper Granma published a
letter from Cuba's Council of Bishops congratulating Castro for opening
up dialogue in the country.
Cubans like Luis Alfredo Vulte Villanueva, a frail 71-year-old, stand to
benefit from an expanding alliance. Before he found the Casa de Abuelos
day-care program at a Havana church, he felt "abandoned as a human being."
"I had no one to shave me, no one to bathe me," he said, sitting with
his cane in a plastic chair as he waited for lunch. "The priest treats
us very well. The food is good. They give me a shave, they help me
bathe, and my clothes are washed."
After Fidel Castro brought his socialist revolution to Cuba, the state
seized Catholic schools and expelled priests critical of the revolution.
Cuba was declared constitutionally atheist, and believers in any faith
couldn't join the Communist Party.
Relations thawed as Castro began to realize the church's importance in
Cuba's identity, and he started opposing religious discrimination just
as he had long opposed racial discrimination, said Alonso, the Cuban
academic.
Meanwhile the church worked to rebuild credibility with Havana, opposing
the U.S. embargo and keeping an arm's length from the exile community in
Florida.
Cuba removed atheism from the constitution and opened party membership
to the religious in the early 1990s, and later that decade Pope John
Paul II visited and exhorted Cuba to "open to the world" -- and "the
world to open to Cuba."
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Associated Press writer Andrea Rodriguez contributed to this report.
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