NEWS STORY: Experts: Pope set stage for greater Cuban Catholic influence

c. 1998 Religion News Service WASHINGTON _ Pope John Paul II’s recent visit to Cuba gave the Cuban Catholic Church a substantial boost that could enable it to play a critical role in pushing for continued political change in that communist nation, a panel of Cuba experts agreed Friday (Feb. 6). In the long term, […]

c. 1998 Religion News Service

WASHINGTON _ Pope John Paul II’s recent visit to Cuba gave the Cuban Catholic Church a substantial boost that could enable it to play a critical role in pushing for continued political change in that communist nation, a panel of Cuba experts agreed Friday (Feb. 6).

In the long term, said Jose Sorzano, a former Reagan administration national security adviser and United Nations representative, this strengthening of the Cuban church may be the most important aspect of the pope’s five-day visit, which ended Jan. 25.


During the visit, the pope and various Cuban bishops criticized Cuban President Fidel Castro’s totalitarian rule repeatedly and called for greater freedom for the church and Cuban citizens.

Archbishop Pedro Meurice of Santiago de Cuba dramatically underscored how the pope’s visit had emboldened the Cuban church when he declared that”many Cubans confuse this nation with a sole (political) ideology”_ a”confrontational”state of affairs he said had been”induced”by the government.

Sorzano, a hardline opponent of the Castro regime, pointed to such comments as signs the Cuban Catholic Church was preparing itself to assume a”new prophetic role”in which it would push the government to cede ever greater freedom to the church and other elements of Cuban society.

Speaking at a think tank-symposium on the papal visit, author Tad Szulc agreed the Cuban church _ the largest non-governmental institution in Cuba _ is now positioned”to play a major political role”during what he believes will be a period of inevitable social and economic change in Cuba.

Moreover, said Szulc, who has written biographies on both Castro and John Paul, that’s just what the pope had in mind in going to Cuba.

Szulc noted a statement the pontiff made soon after his return from Cuba, in which he said he hoped his visit would produce results similar to those of his 1979 journey to his native Poland, then a communist state.

That visit strengthened the Polish Catholic Church and led to the formation of the independent but church-influenced trade union Solidarity. Those changes, in turn, led to a series of Solidarity-led strikes in 1988 and the election of the first non-communist premier in what was then the Soviet bloc.


However, Thomas Quigley noted the Cuban Catholic Church was experiencing growth and increased public vigor even before the papal visit.

Quigley, an adviser on Latin America and the Caribbean to the United States Catholic Conference, the social policy arm of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, also pointed out the inherently political side of any papal visit.

While the pope said the church did not seek political power in Cuba,”who said the pastoral doesn’t include the full range of human existence … including what has come to be known as Catholic social teaching?”Quigley said.

The church growth Quigley referred to has largely come since the early 1990s, when Cuba eased its persecution of the Catholic Church and other religious organizations.

Still, only about 40 percent of Cuba’s 11 million people are baptized Catholics, and only about 2 percent regularly attend Catholic churches. In addition, the church is short on priests or nuns. Even with the addition of some 57 foreign priests and nuns allowed into Cuba by the government shortly before John Paul’s arrival there, the Cuban church has less than 300 priests and just over 400 nuns.

Despite the shortage of church workers, a Cuban Catholic church bolstered by the pope’s visit is still in a position to immediately impact Cuban society because of its dedicated laity, said Harvard professor Jorge I. Dominguez.


Cuban Catholics, said Dominguez, who directs Harvard’s Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, were, for the most part, not raised to be Catholic but have chosen that path for themselves.

The dedication of these”born-again Catholics,”he said, will enable the church to push for democratic and religious change in a Cuba where the government is”losing its grip.” The church”can provide a number of openings for social change that are not explicitly religious,”Dominguez said.

DEA END RIFKIN

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