Pope Francis is bringing a wish list to Cuba, but he may be disappointed

Pope Francis is bringing a wish list to Cuba, but he may be disappointed
By Nick Miroff September 17 at 7:00 PM

HAVANA — The president of Cuba is a communist who was educated in Jesuit
academies. The pope is a Jesuit who grew up attending public schools.

They took vastly divergent paths, but both Raúl Castro, 84, and Pope
Francis, 78, are immigrants' sons who were brought up in post-World War
II Latin America and who today share a sense of alarm about where the
rapidly globalizing world is headed.

Francis's denunciations of liberal capitalism and his central role in
Cuba's reconciliation with the United States have pleased Castro so much
that he declared in May that he was considering a return to the church.
When reporters laughed, the Cuban leader insisted: "I'm serious."

Now it will be up to Francis to leverage that goodwill and to obtain a
few of the church's wish-list items in Cuba.

Castro has said he plans to accompany the pope throughout his visit to
the island Saturday to Tuesday. Although it is not listed on his
official schedule, Francis is also likely to meet privately with former
president Fidel Castro, 89, according to the Vatican.

Francis's trip follows Pope Benedict's in 2012 and the trailblazing
visit of Pope John Paul II in 1998. Long before those trips, the church
dropped its confrontational approach to the Castro brothers in favor of
a quieter push for gradual change and a greater role in civic life. Both
papal visits advanced those goals.

In cities and towns across the island, the Catholic Church and other
religious congregations are assuming a growing social role where the
impoverished socialist state is falling down. The church offers
English-language and computer courses; hot meals and medicine; and care
for the elderly, disabled, neglected and paroled.

But in other fundamental ways, Cuba remains the most restrictive country
in the Americas for religious expression. The Catholic Church cannot
operate its own K-12 schools, and it is largely absent from the
state-controlled airwaves. Many properties seized during the peak of
tensions between Castro and the Catholic Church in the 1960s remain
under government control.

The pope arrives at a critical phase in the Communist Party's attempt to
transition Cuba to a post-Castro era. Ailing Fidel Castro has all but
withdrawn from public life, and Raúl Castro insists that he will step
down in 2018, when his five-year presidential term is set to end. Next
in line to succeed him is Vice President Miguel Díaz-Canel, 55.

Kennedy-era U.S. trade sanctions remain in place. The church opposes
them, and Francis is expected to criticize the measures during his visit.

"This is a very complex moment in Cuba," religion scholar Enrique Lopez
Oliva said in Havana. And Francis "is trying to insert the Catholic
Church into the country's process of change."

Like many Cubans of his generation, Raúl Castro openly worries about
what he calls a "loss of values" among Cuban youths. Despite a virtual
government monopoly on media, Cuban leaders see evidence for their
concern in the popularity of sex-charged reggaeton music, violent video
games and what they call banal television programming.

They lament the erosion of socialist mores, but they rarely acknowledge
the toll inflicted by 25 years of economic austerity and a system of
woefully low-paying state jobs that don't afford a dignified life. Moral
compromises — pilfering, prostitution and corruption — became acceptable
survival tactics for many Cubans.

Yet there are few signs that the government is ready to cede ground on
fundamental issues such as K-12 schooling. The country's still
relatively strong public education system plays a central role in
spreading the socialist ideology at the core of the Castros' revolution,
and it is critical to their vision of Cuban national identity.

"The country had a separate Catholic education system in the past that
produced social stratification and elites," said Catholic intellectual
Lenier González.

He said it is likely that the Cuban government will continue allowing
the church to have an educational role that complements, but does not
compete with, K-12 schooling.

In that model, the church can expand its role in preschool education,
university-level training and after-school classes that "teach the
values of the church, faith and morality," he said. But a parallel,
private religious education system may still be out of bounds.

Both Fidel and Raúl Castro grew up in such a system. Their father, a
Spanish immigrant who became a prosperous sugar-cane planter, sent them
to Jesuit boarding schools in Santiago de Cuba and later Havana.

Fidel Castro arrived in 1942 at the Colegio de Belén, when he was 16.
Today, it's a military academy.

Set on sprawling grounds adjacent to the sultry Tropicana nightclub,
much of the once-prestigious campus appears to be in disrepair. There's
been speculation here that Raúl would bring Francis — who spent much of
his life studying and working at Argentina's top Jesuit school — to see
the former Belén campus. But that seems unlikely.

On a recent morning, soldiers were drilling on the baseball fields where
Fidel Castro was a notable pitcher and track star. Billboard-size
messages to the cadets were visible behind the high walls and fences.

"Success depends on intelligence, patience, and above all firmness of
action," read one. "Be alert!" urged another.

Perhaps a more attainable short-term goal for Francis, observers say,
would be getting permission to open an independent Catholic university
on the island.

Francis will pay a visit, during his trip, to Havana's Padre Varela
cultural center, a former seminary that already functions as a small de
facto university. About 90 students are enrolled in a humanities program
there, and they can obtain corresponding degrees through affiliated
universities in Europe.

The center in recent years offered an MBA training program geared toward
Cuba's emerging entrepreneurs, and demand was high. But the program was
controversial with Cuban authorities, and it has ceased to operate.

Source: Pope Francis is bringing a wish list to Cuba, but he may be
disappointed - The Washington Post -
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/pope-francis-is-bringing-a-wish-list-to-cuba-but-he-may-be-disappointed/2015/09/17/3a083c26-5beb-11e5-8475-781cc9851652_story.html