c. 2006 Religion News Service

SOUTH ORANGE, N.J. _ On a recent trip to meet religious and government leaders in Cuba, Monsignor Robert Sheeran, president of Seton Hall University, was heartened to see crowded churches, a sign that the Communist country has become more welcoming to worshippers.

But when it comes to religious education on the island, the faithful are still waiting, Sheeran said. More than four decades ago, Fidel Castro shuttered some 400 Catholic schools, charging that they spread dangerous ideas, and religious schools remain banned today.

“We preach the gospel not only in the pulpit, but in the classroom and in the hospital room,” Sheeran said after the trip. “And I think the church always wants the freedom to be the church, not to be a political bloc.”

Sheeran’s visit comes at a time when Cuba is poised for a massive transition. An ailing Castro ceded temporary power over the country to his brother, the 75-year-old Defense Minister Raul Castro, in July, and did not appear publicly during weeklong celebrations for his 80th birthday that ended Dec. 2.

Rabbi Arthur Schneier, president of the Appeal of Conscience Foundation in New York, which organized the trip, accompanied Sheeran and said “there’s a lot of suspense” in Cuba right now.

“President Castro is in the picture but out of the picture,” he said. “You have the guessing game: What will the brother’s policy be like? What will the new team be like?”

Schneier, whose group promotes peace, tolerance and ethnic conflict resolution around the world, is a regular traveler to Cuba and has met with Castro on several occasions since 1998. For Sheeran, 61, it was his first visit.

While the U.S. government officially has an economic embargo against Cuba, Schneier and Sheeran said American leaders like them need to find ways to build contacts with Cubans to prepare for the day of a political breakthrough.

While there, the two met with leaders in the Catholic, Episcopal, Baptist, Jewish and evangelical Christian communities. They also met with Cardinal Jaime Ortega; Bruno Ramirez, a former ambassador to the United Nations; Caridad del Rosario Bello Diego, the director of the Cuban government’s religious affairs office; and Ricardo Alarcon, the high-profile speaker of Cuba’s parliament.

Sheeran said the foundation urged Alarcon to consider amnesty for roughly 70 prisoners associated with the Varela Project, a failed movement for political democratic reforms in Cuba. Alarcon was noncommittal, Sheeran said.

The religious leaders Sheeran spoke with in Cuba tended to be discreet about the possibility of greater religious freedom in any coming transition, he said. But it was clear to him there is a yearning by the faithful for greater freedoms.

“Obviously the Catholic Church would like to do education,” Sheeran said. “We asked Cardinal Ortega if he could have one wish from Fidel, what would it be, and he said he would want education.”

For decades under Castro’s rule, Cuban citizens could not practice their faith freely. Those who did faced social sanctions, including being banned from certain jobs. The Cuban government began mending fences with the Catholic Church in the early 1990s, when the Communist Party lifted its membership prohibition on religious followers; the state, long officially atheist, became secular.

Sheeran agrees with the widespread belief that Pope John Paul II’s visit to the island in 1998 further improved relations between church and state.

But the government continues to ban religious institutions from running their own parochial schools, hospitals or clinics.

“No organization internationally does education like the Catholic Church,” from preschools to universities, Sheeran said.

He said he hoped that the foundation’s efforts in Cuba will make a difference.

“It’s like when I give a sermon,” Sheeran said. “I’ve prepared it and done my best, and it’s up to God to do what he will in his own way.”

(Ana M. Alaya writes for The Star-Ledger in Newark, N.J.)

KRE/PH END ALAYA

Editors: To obtain a photo of Robert Sheeran, go to the RNS Web site at https://religionnews.com. On the lower right, click on “photos,” then search by subject or slug.