By Mark Greaves
12/5/2008
The Catholic Herald (UK) (www.catholicherald.co.uk/)
Saturday's beatification ceremony at Camagüey, about 300 miles from
Havana, was broadcast by state television and heralded by a front-page
article.
CAMAGUEY, Cuba ( The Catholic Herald, UK) - Cuban president Raul Castro
attended his country's first beatification ceremony last Saturday in a
historic gesture of support for the Church.
His unexpected arrival was greeted with applause by thousands of people
who had come from all over Cuba to attend the beatification of
19th-century Brother José Olallo.
His presence is being seen as a signal to the nation's Catholics that
despite decades of repression by the Communist government they should
feel free to express their faith.
In the early years of the revolution hundreds of priests were expelled
or forced to work in labour camps and anyone who declared their faith
openly was barred from many jobs.
The country's Catholic education system was also dismantled.
But after the collapse of the Soviet bloc the state softened its
hard-line stance and in 1992 it amended its constitution so that it was
no longer officially atheist.
Saturday's beatification ceremony at Camagüey, about 300 miles from
Havana, was broadcast by state television and heralded by a front-page
article in the state-run newspaper.
Cardinal José Saraiva Martins, former prefect of the Vatican
Congregation for the Cause of Saints, said the beatification was a
"landmark" for Cuba.
He was joined at the ceremony by Cuban Cardinal Jaime Ortega, papal
nuncio Archbishop Luigi Bonazzi, and about 20 other Cuban and foreign
bishops.
Doves were released and bells rung as Brother Olallo's remains were
carried in a gold-coloured urn through the city.
It was the first ever beatification ceremony to be held in Cuba - though
Brother Olallo is not the first Cuban to be beatified. José López
Piteira was beatified last year in Spain where he died during the
Spanish Civil War.
Brother Olallo, a member of the Hospitaller Brothers of St John of God,
tended the sick and wounded during Cuba's first war of independence
against Spain. He was one of the few religious in the country to defy
Spain's orders to leave, instead staying in Camagüey, where he worked as
nurse and surgeon for more than 50 years. He became known as "the poor
people's priest".
Daniela Ramos, 12, who lives in Camagüey, was cured of lymphoma thanks
to Brother Olallo's intercession, the Vatican concluded this year. She
attended the ceremony, saying: "I feel happy because Brother Olallo
chose me to perform his miracle and because he is being beatified."
She said that all she remembered of the time she was sick was how often
she had to have needles stuck in her veins.
She had an obligation to give thanks to God, she said, "because in the
hospital waiting room there were many other children, sick as I was, and
they died".
She also said she planned to ask for a cure for her father, who needs a
kidney transplant. "I will ask that God put his hands on all the ill
children and that they are healed, since he did it for me and he reigns
in peace and love over all the earth," she said.
Relations between the Church and Cuba's Communist government have
improved considerably since John Paul II visited the country in 1998.
Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Vatican Secretary of State, was the first
foreign visitor to meet Raul Castro after he took over the presidency
earlier this year. The Vatican said at the time that Pope Benedict XVI
was also keen to visit Cuba. The warmth of the relationship is all the
more surprising because Raul Castro was one of the original
revolutionaries and a military leader who many feared would be more hard
line than his brother, Fidel.
Belisario Niepo, Latin America programme co-ordinator for development
charity Progressio, said his appearance at the beatification ceremony
was "unheard of". He said: "It is a way of showing that you can be
Catholic and not feel threatened by [the government]. And it is closing
the gap between the state and the Church."
Mr Niepo said Raul had started to allow people more freedom in general.
For the first time Cubans can now buy mobiles and computers.
"But Catholics still feel apprehensive because for 50 years there has
been a very tightly controlled regime, and now it is opening up it's
going to take a while before people can feel relaxed about it," he said.
"And although there is freedom, problems occur when priests or other
people get involved in politics and criticise human rights abuses. As an
institution the Church has been seen as a kind of enemy."
A spokesman for Aid to the Church in Need, a charity that helps
persecuted Christians, agreed that the situation for Catholics had
improved in recent years. He said a "major breakthrough" had been the
state's increasingly relaxed attitude towards processions at the
national shrine, Our Lady of Charity of El Cobre. More than 90
processions were allowed over the last year.
But he said Catholics in Cuba did not have "complete freedom" and that
some restrictions were still in place.
Religious schooling is still prohibited, foreign priests and religious
are usually not allowed to work there and the state refuses to return
Church buildings that were seized in 1961.
http://www.catholic.org/international/international_story.php?id=30891&cb300=vocations
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