NEWS FEATURE: U.S. religious leaders’ diplomacy helped pave way for pope’s Cuba visit

c. 1997 Religion News Service UNDATED _ Shortly before midnight, the expected phone call came to the Havana hotel room of Archbishop Theodore McCarrick of Newark, N.J. Minutes later, he and other American clergy were whisked in a government car to an encounter with Fidel Castro, the Cuban leader whose government had once expelled foreign […]

c. 1997 Religion News Service

UNDATED _ Shortly before midnight, the expected phone call came to the Havana hotel room of Archbishop Theodore McCarrick of Newark, N.J.

Minutes later, he and other American clergy were whisked in a government car to an encounter with Fidel Castro, the Cuban leader whose government had once expelled foreign priests and closed religious schools. Three hours later, in the early morning hours of that March 1988 day, McCarrick was leading a prayer in Spanish as the delegation stood hand in hand with the world’s most recognizable communist leader .


“I prayed for Cuba,” McCarrick said in a recent interview. “I prayed for justice and peace. I prayed for the ability of the people to worship. I prayed for the vision of all world leaders.”

The visit was low-key, garnering little attention outside Havana and the New York-New Jersey area served by McCarrick and the other clerics in the delegation.

Yet this delegation and several similar encounters between Cuban officials and U.S. clergy since 1985 created an atmosphere helping to make possible the historic November 1996 meeting at the Vatican between Castro and Pope John Paul II.

During that encounter, which attracted worldwide headlines, Castro invited the pontiff to tour one of the world’s last communist bastions and the only Spanish-speaking nation in Latin America John Paul has not visited. The pope soon accepted.

Though the immediate goal of the U.S. delegations was to provide support for their repressed counterparts, the meetings also had the effect of easing tensions and winning Cuban government concessions allowing the pope to accept Castro’s invitation, according to several religious experts and participants.

“I think he (McCarrick) was instrumental, and I think several bishops on the East Coast were instrumental,” said Brian Smith, a former Jesuit priest and religion professor at Ripon College in Wisconsin. “I think there has been at least 10 years of preparation for this visit, where you have church people from the United States going to Cuba and making overtures.”

Pope John Paul is set to arrive in Havana on Jan. 21 for a five-day visit.


Church observers said the course of recent events is remarkable for a country that declared itself officially atheistic soon after Castro’s 1959 rise to power.

The revolutionary government reacted harshly against a Roman Catholic Church it associated with the outgoing Batista dictatorship, expelling foreign clergy, exiling many Cuban priests, barring practicing Catholics from certain jobs or government posts and carefully monitoring remaining religious activities.

But by the 1990s, with the collapse of Cuba’s Soviet benefactor, Castro had taken the practical steps of liberalizing the economy and permitting greater personal freedom. The church benefited, as more people flocked to services. In 1991, the government even decreed that one could be a good communist and still be devoutly religious and changed Cuba’s official status from atheist to secular.

It was in this atmosphere of newfound permissiveness that delegations of American clergy _ mostly Catholic but also Jews and Protestants _ began to usher in change.

The Cuban Catholic Church initiated the contact in 1984, dispatching an emissary to Washington to ask American bishops for a formal exchange of visits, according to Thomas Quigley, Latin American adviser to the U.S. National Conference of Catholic Bishops.

In January 1985, a high-powered delegation headed by Bishop James W. Malone of Youngstown, Ohio, then president of the bishops conference, visited Cuba. In a gathering one night at the home of the Vatican’s nuncio to Cuba, the group met with Castro, who for the first time mingled with bishops from his own country. The bishops pressed for dialogue between the church and state in Cuba, Quigley said.


Feeling more confident, the Cuban Catholic Church in 1986 held its first national meeting since the 1959 revolution. Although the so-called “Encuentro Nacional,” or National Encounter, was a purely Cuban affair, organizers invited Archbishop Patrick F. Flores of San Antonio, who had previously visited the island.

Meanwhile, other top leaders in the church continued to visit Cuba, including Cardinal John O’Connor of New York, Cardinal Bernard Law of Boston and McCarrick.

McCarrick, a fluent Spanish speaker, was especially well-positioned in his meetings with the Cubans. In the 1960s, he headed Catholic University in Ponce, Puerto Rico, and today serves as chairman of the U.S. bishop’s international policy committee.

McCarrick’s 1988 visit was the first interfaith tour since the revolution. It was sponsored by Appeal of Conscience, an interfaith group based in New York which has organized similar delegations to the Soviet Union and China.

“These pioneering efforts were just like ice-breakers,” said New York Rabbi Arthur Schneier, the founder of Appeal of Conscience and leader of the Cuba trip. “They opened the door a bit. A bridge was established, and that was the most significant thing.”

Meeting with the six clergy in a government office, Castro spoke about the Cuban revolution. But he also talked religion. The Cuban leader approved the shipment of Bibles and Passover supplies for the island’s small Jewish community. And he discussed his Catholic school training while praising the work of Mother Teresa.


“He agreed to have 20 more nuns from Spain work in hospitals there,” Schneier said. “The reason he liked Mother Teresa and the nuns so much was because they worked hard and they didn’t require much pay.”

While Castro came across as rigid in his mindset, Schneier said, the Cuban leader was “wise enough” to realize political change was sweeping the globe and Cuba had to react. The clergy told Castro that allowing change within the religious community was the course “least dangerous in terms of his own stability.”

“We made the point that if regulations were relaxed for religious communities, so they could observe their traditions and rituals, it would redound well back in the United States,” Schneier said.

Contact between American religious leaders and Cuban church officials has not been restricted to meetings between top-ranked clergy. Motivated largely by the country’s economic doldrums, the Cuban government has allowed American humanitarian groups _ everything from Catholic Relief Services to the interfaith Pastors for Peace and the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee _ to operate in Cuba.

In 1991, the Cuban government went so far as to permit Caritas International _ a Catholic relief organization based in Rome _ to open the only nongovernmental relief agency on the island. Today, Caritas operates in all 10 Cuban dioceses and has distributed $15 million in food, clothing and medicine supplied by American Catholics since 1993.

By the early 1990s, the Catholic Church was in a position to ask for the kinds of concessions needed for a papal visit. However, it took several years and a few false starts _ a planned papal tour in the early 1990s fell through _ for January’s scheduled visit by John Paul to fall into place.


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Now, despite the disapproval of hard-liners in Cuba’s regime, the Cuban government has assured the Vatican freedom of movement for the pope and his entourage, the opportunity to hold outdoor Masses, the ability to give uncensored speeches and control of the planning process.

The church did not get everything it wanted. Government officials vetoed a prison visit, the church has been unable to promote the papal tour through the state-run media and it remains unclear whether the Masses will be televised.

But the Cubans did agree to the pope’s call for the government to declare Christmas a national holiday _ but just for this year.

Despite the obstacles, church watchers say it’s striking that a one-party state that once declared itself atheistic would permit a papal tour, particularly for a historically anti-communist pope who is credited with having furthered the fall of socialism in Eastern Europe.

MJP END RNS

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