Pope Francis Faces a Challenge in Opening Cuba to the Church

Pope Francis Faces a Challenge in Opening Cuba to the Church
By JIM YARDLEY, AZAM AHMED and VICTORIA BURNETTSEPT. 18, 2015

VATICAN CITY — In brokering the historic thaw between Cuba and the
United States, Pope Francis stepped squarely into the thorny realm of
geopolitics, sending letters to the presidents of both nations, playing
host to secret meetings in the halls of the Vatican and nudging the Cold
War enemies to put a half-century of vitriol and mistrust behind them.

But as he arrives in Havana on Saturday, the first stop of a nine-day
papal trip to Cuba and the United States, Francis faces a new challenge
altogether: Having helped open up Cuba to the world, the first Latin
American pope must now try to fully open up Cuba to the Roman Catholic
Church.

"It is an occasion to ask for more openness," said the Rev. Jorge Cela,
who oversaw the Jesuit religious order in Cuba from 2010 to 2012. "The
relationship is not easy."

From his own experiences in the 1970s, when Argentina was ruled by a
military dictatorship, Francis knows the complexity, dangers and
difficult compromises of coexisting with repressive authorities. For
decades, the Cuban church has been wary of inciting the wrath of a
Communist government that all but marginalized it after the 1959
revolution, when priests were cast out, religious schools were closed
and the state was declared atheist.

Some call this caution wise pragmatism, noting that the Cuban government
has gradually loosened its grip. But critics contend that the Cuban
church has been too timid — eager to maintain close ties with the
government, at the expense of speaking out for greater political and
religious freedom in Cuban society.

"We could do more," said the Rev. José Conrado, an outspoken Cuban
priest based in the central city of Trinidad, speaking by telephone.
"The church should not back off, even if doing so is difficult and
problematic for the church itself."

Francis has a global reputation for blunt talk and big symbolic
gestures, so his trip to Cuba will be closely watched. Few analysts
think he will press too hard in public, but diplomats in Rome do expect
him to talk about religious freedom, as Pope John Paul II and Pope
Benedict XVI did during past Cuba visits. Francis is expected to push
for more space for the church to operate in Cuban life — currently there
are fewer than 350 priests on an island of just over 11 million people,
and the church is forbidden from running schools or hospitals.

"Oh, I think he will talk about human rights, religious freedom,
allowing the church to play its role not only in worship, but in social
services — the church as a partner in the development of the country,"
said Ken Hackett, the United States ambassador to the Holy See.

One way the Cuban church has made headway in Cuba — winning public good
will and political capital in the process — is by providing food and
services to the needy, which the government itself is struggling to
afford. In turn, the government is permitting construction of some new
churches for the first time in decades, while allowing the church to
organize youth activities and concerts.

Churches and Catholic community centers offer free lunches, clothing,
after-school classes, music groups and libraries. It even runs an M.B.A.
course from a colonial-era cultural center in Havana and publishes
magazines, including New Word, which touch on political and economic
issues as well as spiritual ones. Still, the church has no access to
Cuba's radio waves.

There is also a question of how much spiritual sway the church has over
the Cuban population itself. The Vatican says that 60 percent of Cubans
are Catholic, but according to the State Department, very few of them
regularly attend Mass, only about 4 or 5 percent.

"What the church recognizes today and they are addressing is that the
first thing you have to address with the Cuban people is trying to meet
their basic needs," said Andy Gomez, a former senior fellow at the
Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies at the University of
Miami. "Once you start helping them address their basic needs, food and
shelter, then you can start talking about religion, social change and
some of these other things."

The most powerful figure in the Cuban church is Cardinal Jaime Lucas
Ortega y Alamino, the archbishop of Havana, who is set to retire.
Detractors attack him as being too conciliatory to the government of
President Raúl Castro. Defenders say he is astute and politically savvy
in preserving the relevance of the church.

According to Catholic clergy and lay members, Cardinal Ortega favors a
slower, smoother transition to a more democratic and market-based Cuba,
a view shared by some on and off the island who fear that a more
dramatic change could bring social and economic turmoil. But some Cuban
bishops have wanted a more confrontational approach, while other critics
have been upset by the cardinal's public dismissals of Cuba's political
opposition.

In June, Cardinal Ortega incensed members of the opposition when he
suggested in a radio interview that he had no knowledge of political
prisoners in Cuba.

A month later, he became the focus of an awkward standoff after he
refused to accept a list of political prisoners presented to him by two
dissidents during a reception at the United States Interests Section
(the building soon reopened this summer as the American embassy when
diplomatic relations with Cuba were restored). The dissidents loudly
began to berate the cardinal, who threatened to call security.

"The line that you have to walk to have a voice in calling out
injustices that the government commits, and on the other side mediating
and looking for space for dialogue, that line is a tightrope, very
difficult to walk," said Carlos Saladrigas, a Cuban businessman who grew
up in Miami and has close ties to the church.

"Sooner or later you fall on one side or the other," he added. "Ortega
has shown us that he has a tendency to do that."

There have certainly been times when the church has challenged the
government. In the early 1990s, after the fall of the Soviet Union,
Fidel Castro, knowing that he needed new allies and new sources of
money, began to soften his stance on the church.

The move seemed to energize the church, which issued a statement in 1993
that sent waves through the Catholic community — and the government — in
its calls for more openness to ideas outside of the state.

Ultimately, the door slammed on the church once more as Fidel Castro
grew increasingly worried about its public activities and those of other
Christian activists seeking to reform one-party rule.

"He felt a red line needed to be drawn against church political
involvement," said Paul Hare, a former British ambassador to Cuba and a
professor at Boston University, describing the late 1990s. "So Cardinal
Ortega distanced himself from these activities and we see the rifts
still visible today."

Replacing the cardinal will be one of Francis' most complicated and
important tasks. He will travel throughout the island, meeting different
bishops and church figures. It should allow him to make a personal
evaluation of the next potential leader of the Cuban church, though
analysts do not expect a decision soon.

"There are not a lot of bishops in Cuba," said Gianni La Bella, an
expert in Latin American Catholicism and a member of the Community of
Sant'Egidio, a liberal Catholic group active in international affairs.
"It is not easy to choose the right man for the place."

That choice will help define the position of a church that some Cuban
Catholics say is already divided between the leadership and a small but
passionate cadre of priests, many of them missionaries, who are focused
on the poor.

"There are two visions on the role of the church," said Dagoberto Valdés
Hernández, editor of a Catholic magazine, Convivencia, speaking by phone
from Cuba. "One that looks inside, and one — which is Pope Francis' —
which looks outside itself, into the peripheries."

He added, "I think that our church in Cuba is still looking too much
into itself."

But Francis has unique advantages in Cuba, given that he is a native
Spanish speaker bearing a popular message of social justice and the
pitfalls of capitalism. Cuban officials have already signaled their
approval. During his last trip to the Vatican, Raúl Castro joked that
Francis might even convince him to return to church.

Few expect that a Cuban government still so firmly in power is going to
roll over, no matter how popular the pope may be. And those government
critics, especially in Miami, who want Francis to publicly rebuke Mr.
Castro are likely to be disappointed. The toughest negotiations will
likely happen in private.

"Cuba is his hardest task," Mr. Hare said. "He will know that he has to
engineer a new path in Cuba and he has the best opportunity yet with his
rhetoric, background of social activism and lack of stuffiness to open
the key to the Cuban door."

Victoria Burnett contributed.

Source: Pope Francis Faces a Challenge in Opening Cuba to the Church -
The New York Times -
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/19/world/americas/pope-francis-cuba.html?_r=0