Cuba, church relations at a high
HAVANA — Golden rays of tropical sunlight slant through the caved-in roof of Saint Thomas de Villanueva chapel, illuminating tiles graced by the faces of saints. Vandals shattered the stained-glass windows and scrawled their names on the thick walls during decades of frigid relations between the Roman Catholic Church and Cuba’s communist government.
But a new chain-link fence surrounds the building, protecting it for a future that once seemed unimaginable.
The church is planning to restore the building to its former glory, along with more than a dozen more churches, parish houses and other buildings, as part of a quiet reconciliation between the Catholic Church and the Cuban government that has brought relations to a historic high point this Christmas. Authorities have also given permission for the construction of the first two new churches in more than five decades.
After years of bridge-building behind closed doors, the Cuba-Vatican rapprochement burst into the headlines last week when the U.S. government credited Pope Francis with helping facilitate the secret reconciliation talks between the U.S. and Cuba. Francis wrote the leaders of both countries to invite them to resolve their differences.
“We ask the Lord to continue moving forward this process of reconciliation and peace that Pope Francis has favored and supported,” Cuban Cardinal Jaime Ortega said in his homily at a Christmas Eve Mass in Havana’s colonial cathedral.
Church officials and experts said the mediation and the renovation and construction of churches were essential parts of a fundamental shift in the dealings between the church and the communist state, which has been hostile toward religion for decades.
Developments “are heading in the same direction: a new chapter in the general and economic history of Cuba, and also church-state relations,” said Enrique Lopez Oliva, a religious historian at the University of Havana.
The church and the Cuban state were in a state of open hostility in the years immediately after the 1959 revolution that put Fidel Castro in power, a time when some anti-Castro militias used churches to store weapons.
Some priests were sent to labor camps. Churches were confiscated and used by the government as warehouses, bakeries, dining halls or schools.
Openly practicing Catholics were barred from holding public office and membership in the Communist Party. For the faithful, even winning admission to a university could be difficult, and the ubiquitous neighborhood watch committees kept an especially watchful eye on them.
But a thaw began in the 1990s as Cuba removed a constitutional clause declaring the country an officially atheist state. Pope John Paul II paid a momentous visit in 1998 and urged a new era of openness between Cuba and the world. After Benedict XVI visited in 2012, Cuba made Good Friday an official holiday.
Christmas decorations are increasingly visible in office buildings and homes each year. However, the church has made little headway in its hope for more access to state-controlled airwaves and permission to run religious schools.
Earlier this year, the editors of a church magazine that has been one of the few independent publications in the country resigned, citing internal pressures from some who felt it was becoming too political.
According to a church member, the handover of properties was mentioned during negotiations between Castro and Cardinal Ortega in July 2010, when the church mediated the release of a group of jailed dissidents.
The properties include two churches, a parochial house and other real estate that was being used as stores in Santiago, Cuba’s second-largest city; two plots of land and a chapel in the Bayamo-Manzanillo Diocesis; and the College of Jesuit Priests.
