Cuban Church Awaits Pope's Visit

HAVANA (AP) - Cuba's Roman Catholic Church, repressed for years under the island's Marxist regime, hopes a visit by Pope John Paul II will help it regain the freedom it needs to exercise its ministry.

Cuban bishops are encouraged by a slow but increasingly visible revival of Catholicism. To push the revival further, however, the church will need things the government may not be willing to give: access to news media and its own system of education, among others.

The Cuban government needs the papal visit in January to project a more tolerant image abroad. The church needs it as a lever to widen its sphere of influence in Cuban society.

Religious officials, while emphasizing the ``pastoral'' aspect of the visit, recognize that it could have political repercussions. The church sees itself as an agent of peaceful change in Cuban society at a time when the Marxist system is under pressure to yield.

``The gospel must become alive in man and transform his life, give him what he is searching for,'' Monsignor Emilio Aranguren, bishop of Cienfuegos and secretary-general of the Catholic Bishops Conference, told The Associated Press. ``Faith makes an impact and inspires commitments.''

The pope's visit to Cuba was arranged last year when President Fidel Castro met John Paul at the Vatican.

``This is good for the government,'' said Enrique Lopez Oliva, professor of history at Cuba's National University. ``The visit is a symbolic break of the embargo and the isolation of Cuba.''

``The government knows that the church is the only organized institution that can face up to it,'' he said. ``But the church is not going to fight for power. It wants to be an instrument of reconciliation in a time of transition.''

In Cuba, the Catholic Church has never played the significant political and social role it did in other in other Spanish-speaking countries, according to Jorge Ramirez Calzadilla, director of the Center for Psychological and Sociological Research.

As winds of independence swept the region, Cuba remained strongly attached to Spain by a conservative ruling class that kept slavery legal until 1885.

While in other countries the church evangelized the Indians, in Cuba it largely ignored the black population that mixed handed-down African religions and Catholicism to create a religion now known as Santeria.

The socialist revolution that brought Castro to power in 1959 caught the church before the renovating movement of the Vatican II Council, and the clergy here was still conservative.

Church leaders criticized the revolution, which in turn repressed religion and declared it an obstacle to socialism.

In 1993, the church issued a strong pastoral letter in which it criticized Cuba's political and economic policies and a state security system that created a ``fear whose reasons no one knows.''

Ramirez said the recent resurgence of religion may be explained in part by the economic crisis sparked by the collapse of the Soviet Union. He said it has created a new relationship between government and church.

The educational system no longer emphasizes the teaching of scientific atheism, and being a believer is no longer a political handicap.

In June, the government allowed the public celebration of a Mass in front of the cathedral for the first time. This year, thousands of young Cubans participated in an evangelical campaign, visiting private homes and distributing information about the pope's visit, something that would not have been allowed previously.

``We do not know how far this new climate of understanding will go, but there seems to be a will on both sides to find common ground for agreements,'' Ramirez said.

John Paul may have played a major role in bringing down communism in his native Poland, but Ramirez said he does not expect the pope to attack the Cuban system of government.

``It would be like hitting the weak and it would not look good internationally,'' he said. ``But he could use the visit to ask for more spaces for the church.''

What's more, according to Orlando Marquez, spokesman for the archbishop of Havana, ``any message by the church can have political or social repercussions.''

The church still faces many restrictions. It cannot have its own press or access to newsprint, and new priests need special permits to enter Cuba, although the government recently announced it would give 80 religious visas before the pope's visit.

``But the church needs to form its own lay leaders, and for that it needs schools,'' said Lopez Oliva, the history professor.

Monsignor Aranguren said: ``We now have an informal system in the parishes to educate the new generations in the traditional values of our culture and idiosyncrasy ... values that have been lost throughout the years.''

He said the pope's visit ``will be mainly to call for reconciliation.''

``There is need for reconciliation with God, reconciliation with the national soul of Cuba, with our roots and our idiosyncrasy and reconciliation among all Cuban brothers now divided,'' he said.

``When a country goes through the experience Cuba did it is more difficult to forgive, but the message of the pope is one of forgiveness.''

AP-NY-08-16-97 1148EDT

Copyright 1997 The Associated Press.

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