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A Pope in the Land of the Orishas

Reynaldo González

The Poor’s Pope and the Nation’s Church
The lengthy preparations for the visit of John Paul II to Cuba created expectations which grew as the date for his arrival approached. In July 1997, the Cuban bishops celebrated the first open-air Mass authorized by the government since 1960, in Havana’s Cathedral Square. Long ago, in 1959, there was another much-talked-about Mass, when the bearded rebels came down from the Sierra Maestra under halos of victory, having defeated the dictator Fulgencio Batista. Their young leader, Fidel Castro, who had not yet declared himself to be a Marxist-Leninist, wore on his chest a medal of the Virgen de la Caridad del Cobre (Virgin of Charity)—the same Catholic patron of Cuba who now has been crowned by this "Pope of the Poor," as John Paul II has been called.

Many things happened between that Mass in the first days of the Revolution and the one which preceded the preparations for the visit of the Supreme Pontiff of the Catholic church. Conflicts broke out between the ecclesiastical hierarchy and the Cuban state, beginning with a first round which the church lost by miscalculating its strength in comparison to the unquestionably massive support enjoyed by the young Revolution. Not quite reaching the point of a definitive break, the initial enmity was followed by prolonged efforts to come closer together and, recently, by a notable improvement in relations.

At last July’s outdoor Mass, celebrated on St. Peter’s Day to announce the coming visit of St. Peter’s current successor to the Vatican throne, both lay and religious personnel distributed pamphlets to some 3,000 people, explaining that the pope was "not a tourist nor a politician of the right or the left," nor did he constitute "a magic remedy" for Cuba’s current problems. The pamphlets recounted who the pope was, how he had been chosen, who Jesus Christ and Peter were, what the church is.

(1) A video exhibited in many parishes—Habemus Papam, directed by Carlos León — also explained the papal election. Such apparently obvious information was necessary for a population that is supposedly Catholic but which, over nearly four decades, received only the religious education doled out in doses to those who attended services, considerably reduced for long periods. Churchgoers faced the proclaimed atheism that predominated in the reigning organizations and structures of the society.

Before the Mass held in July at Cathedral Square, the Catholic Churches and those of other denominations were being filled by a public avid for spiritual support in the midst of a crisis that, as everyone knows, transcends the economic sphere and generates a discouragement which is undermining the morale of those who are not receiving the bulk of the benefits. And the Mass was a detonator. From  that moment on, the efforts of the priesthood spread from the sanctuaries into the streets. At first this movement was a timid one. Then it became more obvious and finally peaked with processions carrying a statue of the Virgin of Charity and visits to homes. Little by little, on the doors of some houses, and later on many, posters appeared with the pope’s face and the slogan that he was "the messenger of truth, peace and solidarity." These were gestures that no one could have foreseen some years before, when relations between the church and the state were not so cordial.

When the pope’s visit was imminent, the Cuban flag began to appear on the posters along with his face, which demonstrated the Catholic church’s wish to emphasize its historic ties to the Cuban nation. Nationalism, after all, reached peak heights in Cuba as a response to U.S. interventionism and then to the stubborn economic embargo, now condemned even by the Vatican. Staking claim to a link between religion and nationalism was a useful move for a church that, after some unpleasant vicissitudes, is seeking greater space for its preachings and deeper roots among its parishioners.

This line of persuasion was sanctioned during John Paul II’s visit (the night of January 23) to the University of Havana’s Aula Magna, in the presence of outstanding intellectuals, President Castro, and part of his governing circles. Before the mausoleum that holds the remains of the Cuban priest Felix Varela (1787-1853), in whose thought many specialists place the origins of the Cuban nationalist sentiment, they exalted the pro-independence posture of that cleric—who died in exile and is in the process of being canonized—as inspired by Christ’s idea of social justice.

All those present were aware of the historic importance of the priest, eminent professor, and adversary of scholasticism, and of his clear pro-independence posture, firmly grounded in Cuban intellectual thought. But his preaching did not sway the priests of his time, who mainly supported the colonial government and the pro-slavery regime, with a few honorable exceptions. So now it was a matter of the church trying to cloak itself in Varela’s beliefs, because the participation of priests alongside the masses in the struggle for independence, while found in the histories of other Latin American countries, did not occur to the same extent in Cuba. That truth, widely recognized by impartial historians, was skillfully filtered or hidden in the homilies of the religious services.

A very different note, more redolent of confrontation than of reconciliation, was struck by the archbishop of Santiago and primate of the national church, Pedro Meurice Estiú on January 24. His words contrasted with those of Cardinal Jaime Ortega and other members of the hierarchy, who focused more on the pastoral nature of the pope’s visit. Meurice Estiú was the first speaker in the ceremony in which the pope crowned the effigy of the Virgin of Charity, believed to be the same statue, according to 16th-century legend, that helped to save three fishermen on the point of drowning  in their capsized boat. Meurice Estiú’s inflated version of certain events linked the Catholic religion to a peculiar interpretation of history and converted many patriots—whose faith, like that of many Cubans, was not their most outstanding virtue—into devout Catholics.

That this point of view was part of a concerted plan to link the Catholic faith to the patriotic spirit was demonstrated when Pope John Paul II himself stated that "a process fed by the Christian faith has forged the characteristic features of this nation." This process, he said, was begun by the Spanish-Indian professor-priest, Miguel de Velázquez, and also by the priest-composer Esteban Salas, whom the pope called "the father of Cuban music." He emphasized the religious vocation of some renowned independence fighters: "Carlos Manuel de Céspedes, father of  his country, who, prostrate at the feet of the Virgin of Charity, began the struggle for Cuban independence. Antonio de la Caridad Maceo y Grajales, whose statue overlooks the plaza that today harbors our celebration, whose mother asked him before a crucifix to commit totally and completely to the cause of Cuba’s freedom." Those present heard him say that "in 1898, General Calixto Garcia’s troops knelt at the feet of the Virgin of Charity in a solemn Mass for the ‘Mambí Declaration of Independence of the Cuban People.’" All of this portrayed Catholicism as planted in the very center of the Cuban nationality and, as such, unavoidable in the search for future solutions.

Without meaning to, John Paul II was touching one of the sensitive points of Cuban patriotism. He referred to the mambí troops and to the military hero Calixto Garcia, later humiliated by U.S. intervention, before it was known that victory achieved in a prolonged and arduous patriotic war against Spain had been snatched away in an unjust conclusion. U.S. intervention converted the conflict into a Cuban-Hispanic-American one and put the former Spanish colony into U.S. hands, this time as a neocolony. If the U.S. did not go further than this, it was precisely because of the firmly-grounded nationalist sentiment of the Cubans which engendered an anti-imperialism whose strength has been unappreciated by the old and new style annexationists. This sentiment has provided the regime led by Fidel Castro with a persistent source of support.

The Humble Caribbean Orishas Greet the Pope of Rome
Together with strengthening the Catholic religion, something else that seems to concern Cuban priests is cleansing the church from added beliefs and practices that often confuse their faithful, especially those tied to Afro-Cuban rites. Some of the bishops’ and the cardinal’s homilies included severe judgments regarding religious fetishism, which is how the church classifies the peculiarities that the syncretic faiths have included in Cuban religious practice.

The pope himself, when he met with the Cuban bishops on January 25, after emphatically saying that the Catholic faith "really forms part of the Cuban identity and culture,"  established boundaries that placed santería in a poor position: "There are some reductionist conceptions that try to place the Catholic church at the same level as certain cultural expressions of religiosity, for example of the syncretic cults that, while meriting respect, cannot be considered a religion per se, but as a collection of traditions and beliefs." This evaluation assumes a clear separation at a moment when syncretic rites and beliefs have won a large following. Some believe that if the church carries those desires too far or again overestimates its own strength, it could run into a serious adversary.

The most powerful among the Afro-Cuban beliefs is that called Regla de Ocha or santería, which with the enormous emigration of babalaos and santeros (santería priests) extends beyond the island and to neighboring countries, including the United States. Santería is a derivative of the religion practiced by Africans of Yoruba nationality, brought as slaves to the sugar cane plantations from the former Dahomey, from Togo, and above all from a large part of southeastern Nigeria. In a logical desire to defend their religion, which was part of their culture in general, the members of the slave masses, later of disadvantaged social strata, and always of the dominated culture, camouflaged their gods with the official patron saints of the Catholic church. Custom and cohabitation did the rest, resulting in a syncretism which expresses itself more clearly in its external manifestations than in the rites and mysteries of that faith, where its believers strive to maintain the purity of their African roots and ancestral language.

Some think that it makes more sense to speak of the catholicization of the orishas rather than of religious syncretism per se. The specialist Natalia Bolívar Aróstegui has suggested that "in the liturgy of the Afro-Cuban religions, Catholic rites are not practiced. When a person decides ‘to become a saint’ or ‘to dedicate himself’ to an orisha, he does not place on his head the Catholic image of that saint, but stone and seashell, that are its ‘core elements’," (2) and because within the religion there is a purism that recovers Yoruba-language chants and African rites. What lay people and the uninitiated see, nevertheless, is a confusion in which Catholic saints are at the same time called by their Catholic names and by their syncretic orisha equivalents.

It is well-known that for many marginal believers of one faith or the other, or of both mixed (a tradition not accepted by the ecclesiastical hierarchy), that same venerated Patron of Cuba, the Virgin of Charity that the pope would crown in Santiago de Cuba, is syncretized with Ochún, a black Aphrodite, goddess of the rivers, empress of love and of a sensual joie de vivre far from the sacred Catholic altars. Other saints who enjoy great popularity on the island also have their equivalents in the Yoruba culture, transplanted to the largest Caribbean  island, like Saint Lazarus, who is believed to be the orisha Babalú Ayé, and who is an object of great veneration—although he does not occupy the principal altar—in the sanctuary of El Rincón that was visited by the pope on January 25 for a "meeting with the world of pain." There is a leprosarium in El Rincón, and for the pope’s visit patients were also brought from other nearby hospitals, such as the one for AIDS patients.

This Afro-Cuban belief is, according to some, Cuba’s most popular religion, but its true membership is difficult to calculate thanks to the customary disguises to which it has recourse, and the confusion as to which of its observances are rituals and which are public celebrations. The essential   thing is that Cuban santería has no quarrel with the Catholic church. There are no babalaos (priests) or santeros (practitioners and initiates) within this far-flung Regla de Ocha who have not been baptized in a Catholic church, nor can they assume these roles without meeting this requirement. In many of their "works" they recommend visiting churches and "stealing" Masses paid for by others (that is, appropriate them without permission, through thought alone), or requesting Masses for the repose of their loved ones, or placing offers in the altars of a church. Their followers often fulfil "promises" which link Catholic sites and institutions with practices that a rigorous parish priest would have to condemn as animist or regressive.

For a long time, and most strongly in some periods of the colony and the bourgeois republic, the Catholic church contributed to the marginalization of santería, in connivance with those in political power. It’s open to question whether this was effective or whether, contrary to the church’s goals, it heightened popular participation in these rituals. Sympathy with the priests was never a predominant sentiment among Cubans, who saw them as protectors of the colonial authorities and then of the bourgeois political order.

Observers were surprised, therefore, by one of the claims of the archbishop of Santiago, Pedro Meurice Estiú, in his  January 24 account of Cuban church history. After discussing the undeniable foundation represented by Father Varela, by the Seminary of San Carlos in Havana, and by the ordained priest Antonio María Claret, and after referring to "the dark years in which, through misgovernment, the church was decimated in the early years of the nineteenth century and crossed the threshold into this century trying to recover," he made the disconcerting declaration that "in the decade of the ‘50s [the church] reached its maximum splendor and Cuban-ness."

The coincidence of these years with the dictatorial cruelty of Fulgencio Batista, with his wave of murder and repression against the opposition in which Catholic young people died, constitutes a tacit acceptance of collaborationism. This was, says Natalia Bolívar Aróstegui (3), a period of growth in Afro-Cuban beliefs, and one might ask whether this growth represented an explicit response: seeking shelter in a kind of religious expression that was not in collusion with the source of their distress.

With the Revolution came a more permissive stance toward these religions—though this stance was neither painless nor without suspicion. The mass media, the theaters, and some official cultural institutions offered privileged position to the expressions of Afro-Cuban faiths in the form of music and dance, cresting with the current flood of salsa, where invocations and references to the orishas can frequently be heard. The music and dance the Africans brought to Cuba are seen as representative of Cuban culture, as the essence of its folklore, whose musicality and rhythm are the heart of a national music which has in turn set the whole world dancing. So, with their liturgical significance filtered into the activities of popular culture, these songs and dances spread beyond what could have been imagined.

During these same years, in confrontation with the Catholic church, the Cuban state adopted Marxist dialectical materialism as its own, to the point of teaching the subject known as "scientific atheism" in the programs for educating trade union and Party cadres. Meurice Estiú referred to this also: As "a fruit of the ideological confrontation with Marxism-Leninism that was induced by the state," the church "once again became impoverished in pastoral agents and means." And now, when it is trying to regain some of the sway it once enjoyed, it runs up against santero practices that are both more crystallized and more widely diffused than ever.

Quite a few people see santería as a popular religion that did not confront the Revolution because it is the faith of the poor and proletarian, much more so than Protestant denominations of the United States or Europe. With racial discrimination destroyed or at least weakened, santería cannot be discredited as a "belief of the blacks." Whites, blacks, and mulattos all turn out for its bembés (observances or celebrations) which have made their way from the periphery to the center of the cities. Also, santería  has served to shield the spiritual defenselessness of a people seeking some moral compensation while confronting the worst of the economic crisis, as the specialist, Bolívar Aróstegui, has said:

"Today’s Cuban is trying to find the identity and spirituality which have been lost over the past thirty years, and is seeking solutions to daily problems. These religions offer practical responses to the problems of their followers. There are powders and prescriptions for seeking one’s fortune, for confidently coping, for use against rivals, for falling in love, for aphrodisiacs, to keep one’s job, to cause one’s enemies to lose their way. But what’s fundamental is that all of these religions provide hope of reaching one’s objectives. In recent years, santería and other Afro-Cuban religions have experienced great growth in other parts of the world too. It’s almost a fad. It appears  that more and more, people need something to believe in, something that provides security and offers alternatives. Another factor in this boom has been the exodus of Cuban emigrants, who ‘carry the island on their shoulders.’"(4)

The Catholic church may see santería as an adulteration of its faith, but its faithful (who are not so faithful in the rigorous sense of other countries, and often switch back and forth between prayers to the saints of the Catholic panoply and those of the Yoruba pantheon) do not see the other religion as an adversary. The pope’s arrival mobilized Catholics, santeros, participants in other religions, and atheists alike—even more so after the call put forth by President Castro (page 25) when Communist Party members also turned out in response. When all of these greeted him during his trip in from the airport, an undeniable empathy developed between the pope and his welcomers, which became characteristic of these events. Many said that the great charisma of the Supreme Pontiff brought them "a seductive serenity." In the provincial ceremonies and in the great Mass in the Plaza of the Revolution, the santero practitioners who turned out for John Paul II (some with clothing and bead necklaces that identified them as iyaboses and iyalochas (initiates)) declared that they wanted to "receive his blessed magnetism," the "positive current" which they immediately discovered or attributed to him.

To the Plaza of the Revolution in Havana, scene of the largest Mass, these practitioners of santería brought a religiosity that, like many things in Cuba, ends up being mixed, evidence of the cross-breeding that has passed from skin and blood into the collective culture. They responded to the insistent call of the radio, television, and newspapers that amplified the most significant points of the call put out by Fidel Castro, who in the end was the most efficient publicist for the pope’s pastoral visit. No one could say who believed or who didn’t, or what they believed in. Whether when they looked at the Virgin of Charity, present in all the ceremonies, they were thinking of Ochún. Whether when they lifted their prayers to the Almighty, to God the Father, instinctively they were invoking Olofí, as santería refers to the Supreme Being, the one who "doesn’t descend" because he is the orisha of all the orishas. What was present was the mosaic of beliefs of the Cuban people, heterogeneous and heterodox, flexible and joyful, equally so in a religious ritual as in a political meeting.

Fidel Depicts a Post-Soviet Pope
Pope John Paul’s visit to Cuba was preceded by an avalanche of jokes that swept the island and somehow made their way into the cables of the journalists who made Havana a center of peak international interest for the first time since the days of the missile crisis of 1962. Jokes have always been a Cuban escape valve, even a form of philosophizing about the most intricate affairs. In the case of the pope, they translated this "low intensity religion"—Catholic or any other sort—of a Cuban people never known for such disputes, in comparison to Central American countries or other Caribbean islands.

Some of the jokes revealed an ingenuity that deserves to be anthologized, although they disturbed those minds given over to a solemnity unusual for Cuba. One of them presents the pope arriving to see "hell on earth, the Devil in person, and a people that lives on miracles." Another converted the encounter of Fidel Castro and John Paul II into a Brazilian movie: God and the Devil in the Land of the Sun (also a name for the block in Havana’s Miramar district that holds both the ugly and ostentatious former Soviet embassy and a Catholic church)

The president may have responded to both jokes in a long television appearance on January 16, his prologue to the Supreme Pontiff’s arrival: "All this great expectation is about the pope coming to Cuba to meet ‘the devil Castro,’ in the ‘last bastion of Communism.’ They hope it will be the end of the Cuban Revolution. Look how they’re dreaming! . . . Really, rather than a meeting of "angel" and "devil," can’t we speak of a meeting of two angels who at least coincide in defending the poor?" (5) This press conference, converted into a very long speech, was the time when President Castro analyzed the recent elections before a panel of Cuban journalists who asked just the right questions for him to bring out the themes of his talk. His explanation about the visit of the first pope to come to Cuba in five centuries of official Catholic pre-eminence (or officious pre-eminence, depending on the ups and downs of the time) became an exhortation for popular participation, a persuasive case to card-carrying militants to give up the old customs from the time when proclaiming atheism was required for entry in the Communist Party, a state only recently left behind when the Party began to accept practicing Catholics.

Fidel Castro devoted particular attention to retelling the most progressive version of the life, deeds, and pronouncements of Karol Wojtyla, the Polish cardinal brought to head the Catholic church, and he underlined his national origin as a significant element of his formation. He said that the pope "lived through a very special experience, in a very special country, where, unquestionably, many errors were committed." He raised the issue of whether in Poland there had existed the true conditions for proposing the construction of socialism, where "there was very strong nationalist sentiment, and the country had often been occupied and partitioned by the great European powers"— among whom, with Prussia and the Austria-Hungarian empire, Russia took pride of place.

He emphasized the strong "anti-Russian sentiments" of the Poles, aggravated "as a result of the Molotov- Ribbentrop Pact," when Soviet troops overran that country. Later, given the circumstances that colored the end of the Second World War, the disagreements between the communist forces and the allies who together <R>defeated Hitler’s Nazism, and the division that established a new partition of Europe, Wojtyla recognized that "the antagonistic feelings, the resentments that existed between the peoples, were very great."

Such was the background of the cultural and professional coming of age of Karol Wojtyla. "It was his fate to live through the German occupation, the passage of the Soviet troops, and the creation of a socialist state under Marxist-Leninist principles applied in a dogmatic way," Fidel Castro recounted, "in a country with anti-Russian sentiments, where 93 percent of the population were active and militant Catholics, and in a country—it’s very important to say so—where the church and the nation emerged together, were born together, and acted together for centuries; that is, the Catholic church was indissolubly linked to the past six centuries of Polish history, and to the existence of the Polish nation in all its struggles for independence."

The president recognized the current pope as "active, combative, with a strong personality," who "logically" entered "into political, philosophical, and ideological conflict against the Soviets and against the system that existed in his country. It’s unquestion- able that he fought against the socialist camp, against the USSR, and against the socialist regime in Poland." In depicting the "really exceptional characteristics" of the Polish pope, Fidel Castro did not hide the expectations that had been created by his visit to one of the last countries of "really existing socialism," but he downplayed international claims that the pope was the prime agent of the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe.

In his portrait of the Supreme Pontiff, Castro was more radical and critical of the fate of the Polish people than, for example, was Cardinal Jaime Ortega Alamino himself, a few days before, when Ortega became the first member of the Cuban clergy to appear on television in more than 35 years. The president stressed the positive qualities of the current pope, "a man of great talent, great intelligence, great culture, and an extraordinary work spirit." He preferred to emphasize the pope’s ideas expressed since the Vatican Council II.

The ideological barrier the Poles erected in opposition to Soviet-style communism because of their Catholic background, Castro said, should not be attributed solely to the personal influence of that bishop and later cardinal of Krakow who would become head of the church in Rome, at least not in any direct way, or to his position at the head of the ecclesiastical ranks: "Because the pope was an active ideological opponent of Marxism, Leninism, and the socialist camp, they attribute to him a large role, very important, in the disappearance of socialism in Poland, in the socialist camp, and even in the USSR," Castro said.

He clarified immediately: "It is really a big invention, to want to give the pope the responsibility for what happened there, when we know the history and the causes of what happened there very well. The pope was not the secretary-general of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, he didn’t run the Soviet Union, or preside over the Comecon, or direct the socialist camp. They named him pope and he went to Rome; but before going to Rome he worked very hard as bishop and then as cardinal within the church. . . . He carried out political activities, he worked actively in a battle that did also have a political character, but the pope really dedicated himself to his religious ideas, he dedicated himself fundamentally to the church."

Both before and during the visit, President Castro repeatedly referred to the pope’s challenges to the monopolization of riches and the consequent impoverishment of the majority. "Because now that the cold war is over, and that historical process and those circumstances have ceased to exist, this pope is possibly one of the biggest headaches  that imperialism has today," he asserted with respect to "the extraordinary influence that the pope has in the whole Western world, in Europe and in Latin America, where more than half of the world’s Catholics live." He added, "With the ideas of the Vatican Council II as a point of departure, he has been making the strongest criticisms that anyone has made, in recent years, about the social and economic problems from which the world suffers."

These were the grounds within which Fidel Castro found points of agreement between John Paul II’s preaching and his own. This was the line of thought that he used on television to address the Communist Party members and the Cuban people on the eve of the Supreme Pontiff’s visit, to explain how he saw this visit in the Cuban context. He said that the pope was a critic of "the unipolar hegemonic outlook of the United States, the system and the political economy which it is trying to impose on the world." He described the pope as "the number one standard bearer of the opposition to the foreign debt," an opposition to the transnationals’ pillaging of poor and developing countries which Cuba has been voicing since 1985. Citing speeches which John Paul II has made in international forums, he concluded that, "it is very difficult to find any of the social problems tormenting Latin America, Africa, and the countries of the Third World, that have not been taken up by the pope," who "has become the critic of neoliberal globalization and the implacable adversary of neoliberalism at this historic moment."

The president’s talk abounded in reasons behind the invitation presented to the pope by the bishops and ratified by Castro himself during his 1996 visit to Rome. He emphasized the points of intersection between Cuban policy and humanistic tendencies expressed by the Supreme Pontiff. It was clear that the Vatican’s condemnation of the U.S. embargo against Cuba, and of other pressure tactics that hurt the populations of poor countries, had constituted one avenue of approach in the improving relations between John Paul II and Fidel Castro. In characteristic style, the Cuban president took his shots at many political figures who now hold in their hands a part of the fate of a world that, since the collapse of socialism in Eastern Europe, has become a unipolar one.

Toward the end of his talk, Castro turned his moral force and his charisma to orienting the people of Havana as to how he wanted them to receive the pope: "We must welcome the pope with all the consideration merited by a head of state, and with all the respect merited by the head of the most influential church in the Western world and in our hemisphere. . . . We are providing proof of our respect for all the world’s religions, a demonstration of respect for the Jews, the Muslims, the Hindus, the evangelical religions—which are numerous, and have many followers all over the world—the Buddhists, the animists, and those who practice syncretic faiths everywhere."

He urged listeners to "be present at the Masses," and he clarified: "For those who are not believers, who may not have any motive to be there, there should be the motivation of showing courtesy and consideration to the visitor." With his customary didactic emphasis, he specified details of the conduct appropriate to the occasion: "We want the plazas full, and no one should be afraid, because history will show we are right. Our country will gain a lot from this. . . . No one should carry a political slogan, a placard, or whistle or hiss, or make any sign of protest against any word that may be said from the altar—not the smallest expression of annoyance with any phrase, any word, or any pronouncement which displeases us, which seems unjust or upsets us."

In compliance with these commandments, the people went into the streets where the papal procession would pass. At the Masses, the non-believers stood respectfully alongside the believers, following the example of Fidel Castro himself and of other leaders of the Cuban Communist Party. Discipline was maintained. The streets and the plazas were packed with Catholics and non-Catholics, during a visit that disconcerted those who expected a confrontation, and that made Cuba the lead story in print media and television all over the world. In few other places has John Paul II received a welcome so formal and disciplined, so expectant, so charged with latent yet intangible political connotations.

Divergence and Convergence: The Pope and Fidel in Havana
Without any doubt, both from the point of view of John Paul II and from that of his host Fidel Castro, the pastoral visit was colored by the troubled history of church-state relations in Cuba in the early years after the triumph of the Revolution. The pope showed himself to be conscious of the weakness of his forces whom, as he was reminded by Archbishop Meurice Estiú (of whom he requested "great apostolic audacity") he would find "in a period of open growth and [but] long-suffered credulousness." (January 24)

In his conversation with the Cuban bishops (January 25), John Paul II praised the pursuit of "necessary and sufficient space to serve your brothers, not with the end of attaining power, which is foreign to your mission, but to increase your capacity for service." He urged them to seek "the healthy cooperation of the other Christian faiths," and to maintain and if possible strengthen "in breadth and depth, a frank dialogue with state institutions and with the autonomous organizations of civil society." He emphasized the need to "avoid useless confrontations, and develop a climate of positive dialogue and reciprocal understanding," and he encouraged them to "continue being agents of reconciliation."

One of the pope’s most consistent themes was that of directing the faithful toward the preservation of "virtue." The Catholic church in Cuba has criticized excesses in behavior and sexual habits which devalue family life and indicate a liberality which the church’s doctrines cannot  accept. "History teaches that if virtue disappears, moral values become clouded, truth does not shine, life loses meaning, and even service to the nation can cease to be encouraged by the most profound motivations," the pope said (Jan. 24). Individual liberties occupied space in his homilies because "every person, enjoying freedom of expression, capacity to initiate and propose within the bosom of civil society, and adequate freedom of association, will be able to collaborate efficiently in the pursuit of the common good." (Jan. 24)

In his homily to the youth of Cuba (Jan. 23), the pope included reflections that any government supported by positive values may accept as its own, and so be grateful that the pope, vested in his authority as head of the Catholic church, should take those values into account:

"At present, unfortunately, it is easy for people to fall into the moral relativism and the identity crisis that affects so many young people, victims of cultural models that are empty of meaning or of an ideology that does not offer high and clear moral guidelines. Such moral relativism gives rise to selfishness, division, marginalization, discrimination, fear, and distrust of others. Moreover, when young people live life ‘their own way,’ they idealize things from other countries, they allow themselves to be seduced by unbridled materialism, they lose their own roots and long for distractions. Consequently, the emptiness brought on by this behavior explains many of the evils which beset young people: alcohol, the abuse of sex, drug use, prostitution hidden under different guises, the causes of which are not always and exclusively personal, motivation based on personal likes and selfish attitudes, opportunism, the lack of a serious life project with no room given to a stable marriage; also the rejection of all legitimate authority, the desire to escape and to emigrate, the avoidance of commitment and responsibility in order to seek shelter in a false world founded on alienation and annihilation."

There were more points of convergence between John Paul II and Fidel Castro than there were divergences, above all in the analysis of the deep problems facing the world today. In an interview granted to the newspaper Granma (Jan. 21), Cardinal Roger Etchegaray, president of the papal commission on justice and peace, explained some of the doctrinal principles of the Supreme Pontiff: "He has written that the commitment to justice and peace in a world like our own, marked by so many conflicts and by intolerable social and economic inequality, is an element of top priority in the preparation and celebration of the year 2000’s Jubilee."

Asked for the Vatican’s opinions about the U.S. embargo and the Helms-Burton law, Etchegaray was direct and explicit: "The Holy See is very strict about legal and ethical criteria, to avoid the penalization of civilian populations, especially those who live in precarious conditions. In any case, how can one justify an embargo that has oppressed a country for more than thirty-five years?" (6)

On his arrival at Havana’s airport the pope  made a request that could not fall on deaf ears: "May Cuba, with all its magnificent potential, open itself up to the world, and may the world open itself up to Cuba, so that this people, which seeks the truth like every man and every nation, which works in order to move ahead, which longs for concord and peace, may look toward the future with hope." (Jan. 21) In his farewell he spoke of "restrictive economic measures imposed from outside the country, unjust and ethically unacceptable," and he insisted: "In our day, no nation can live alone. Therefore the Cuban people cannot see itself deprived of links with other peoples which are necessary for economic, social, and cultural development, especially when the isolation that has been created falls  indiscriminately on the population, increasing the difficulties that the weakest persons face." (Jan. 25)

In relation to the weakness faced by the Catholic church in carrying out its functions, the head of the Vatican made one of the objectives of his visit explicit: he came to "give new impulse to the work of evangelization." He lamented the fact that in Cuba the church had to work with "a shortage of priests and in difficult situations," while desiring "the necessary space to continue serving everyone in conformance with the mission and teachings of Jesus Christ." (Jan. 21) His own large public Masses that were announced and broadcast with complete respect, the appearance of the bishops on television, and the facilities that the government made available for the visit, all exemplified a desire to contribute to the improvement of these conditions. Observers assume there is a commitment to continuing such contributions, although more than a few have some doubts about its fulfillment because the church, to judge from the approach of some its dignitaries during the Masses, could become a focus of problems and disputes.

What the pope called "the social evangelism of the church" took center stage in his final homily, during the Mass staged in the Plaza of the Revolution, which was overflowing with believers and non-believers, including President Castro and leading members of the government. On this occasion, John Paul II clarified and synthesized his positions which equally censured the predominant political extremes. His words sounded strange in Havana and in this plaza that has been the site of great assemblies of revolutionary reaffirmation. More than a few of those present were grateful for this variety, and for the emphasis the pope gave to these words:

"The ideological and economic systems succeeding one another in the last two centuries have often encouraged conflict as a method, since their programs contained the seeds of opposition and disunity. This fact profoundly affected their understanding of man and of his relations with others. Some of these systems also presumed to relegate religion to the merely private sphere, stripping it of any social influence or importance. In this regard, it is helpful to recall that a modern state cannot make atheism or religion one of its political ordinances. The state, while distancing itself from all extremes of fanaticism or secularism, should encourage a harmonious social climate and suitable legislation which enables every <R>person and every religious group to live its faith freely, to express that faith in the context of public life, and to count on adequate resources and opportunities to bring its spiritual, moral and civic benefits to bear on the life of the nation.

"On the other hand, some places are witnessing the resurgence of a certain capitalist neoliberalism which subordinates the human person to blind market forces, and conditions the development of peoples on those forces. From its centers of power, such neoliberalism often places unbearable burdens upon less favored countries. Hence, at times, unsustainable  economic programs are imposed on nations as a condition for further assistance. In the international community, we thus see a small number of countries growing exceedingly rich at the cost of the growing impoverishment of a great number of other countries; as a result the wealthy grow ever wealthier, while the poor grow ever poorer."

Fidel Castro had earlier stressed John Paul II’s critical positions with regard to social differences in a world where unjust distribution of resources has become an endemic evil. In the two opportunities he had in which to address the Supreme Pontiff in public, he stressed this connection with his own positions. He outlined a brief historical synthesis of Cuba and assured the pope that he would find "no other country better prepared to understand his felicitous idea, so close to our understanding and so similar to what we preach, that the equitable distribution of riches, and solidarity between men and peoples [are what] must be globalized." (Jan. 21)

These concepts were amplified in his farewell talk: "If the globalization of solidarity that you are proclaiming can spread all over the earth, and the abundant goods that man can produce with his talent and work can be divided equitably among all the human beings who now inhabit the planet, then there could truly be created a planet that is for them, without hunger or poverty; without oppression or exploitation; without humiliation or contempt; without injustice or inequality, where they could live in full moral and material dignity, in true freedom." (Jan. 25)

An Ending with No Conclusions
John Paul II’s visit to Cuba must have cheated those who expected a spectacular clash between concepts and structures of the government headed by Fidel Castro and the supposed papal purpose of accelerating the fall of communism in the Caribbean island that is its last bastion in the West. It is true there were some divergences, and some occasions on which—always from his status as careful prelate—the pope criticized certain policies. These included the transfer of education to agricultural work areas (on the grounds that this was injurious to family unity and direct care by parents in the home), and the promotion of atheism (which once went on unchecked, in line with the judgments of  historical materialism which was accepted as the dominant philosophy). In those two cases, the pope saw a proclivity toward lives without virtue or purpose. He also made veiled references to individual liberties which the Cuban government understands in a manner different from that of other countries. The pope saluted Cuban efforts in the field of health and in maintaining a level of equity in the distribution of goods in the midst of the difficulties through which Cuba is passing, although this Pyrrhic victory has been dimmed by the intensification of the crisis, the fall in productivity, and the introduction of the dollar, with inevitable advantages accruing to those who have access to that currency.

In general it can be expected that, from the time of this visit on, the Cuban Catholic church will enjoy more space, more resources, authorization to increase the number of clergy, and other possibilities previously out of reach. The bottom line of the pope’s stay in Cuba was stated by Fidel Castro himself, in a tone that was friendly but not lacking in a certain irony: "I believe we have set a good example for the world. You, in visiting what some insisted on calling the last bastion of communism; we, in welcoming the religious leader to whom they wished to attribute the responsibility for having destroyed socialism in Europe."

The most widespread opinion was one of sympathy for the infectious personality of John Paul II, for his tenderness toward and understanding of the problems Cuba is passing through. People were grateful because certain things were said for the first time in a public plaza, though no one hesitates these days to say them in private or in widespread small groups. Seen as one point in a transition whose extent is unpredictable, the visit ignites hopes because it testifies to a new type of internal permissiveness and reflects a turning point in the habits of governing and being governed. It transcends the immediate political context and the conquests in the field of religion, pointing toward the gradual recovery of needed traditions and a harmonious development of Cuban society. In contrast to the unpleasantness of the economic crisis which is only slowly being overcome, the event augurs well for positive changes, although it raises questions that only time will be able to answer. The great fear is that, once the commotion of the pastoral visit is over, everything will settle back into a routine whose uncomfortable and disheartening immobility will be all the more noticeable.

Notes
1. See "Quién es el Papa?" ("Who is the Pope?"), pamphlet of the Catholic church of Havana, July 1997.
2. Mauricio Vicent, interview with Natalia Bolívar in Afrocuba ‘97, catalogue of the First Exhibit of Afrocuban Culture, Fundación Españoles en el Mundo, Madrid 1997, p. 9.
3. Vicent; op. cit.
4. Vicent: op. cit., 12-13
5. The quotations from Fidel Castro’s speech were taken from the Sunday paper Trabajadores, Havana.
6. Luis Baéz: "Seldom Has a Papal Visit Provoked Such Universal Interest," Granma, Havana, Jan. 21, 1998.