By Dalia Acosta
HAVANA, Oct 30 1996 (IPS)

This week’s visit by the Vatican’s “foreign minister” Jean Louis Tauran to Cuba is expected to lead to an informal alliance between the government of President Fidel Castro and the Holy See.

The rapprochement, unprecedented in 37 years of socialist government in Cuba, will mean a broader space for the local Catholic Church in exchange for international support by the Vatican against the U.S. boycott of the Caribbean island nation.

During his Oct. 25-29 stay in Cuba, Tauran met with high-level local authorities and negotiated a 1997 visit to Havana by Pope John Paul II.

According to Havana Archbishop Jaime Ortega, the Pope’s visit will mean Cuba will cease to be “an exception” in Latin America, the only nation in the region in which John Paul II has yet to set foot.

Tauran called for “more space for the Church to carry out its mission in Cuba.” He is the first foreign minister of the Vatican to fly to Cuba in the past 22 years. His visit ended with a reiteration by Castro of the official invitation extended to the Pope in 1989.

“The long-awaited visit by Pope John Paul II to Cuba will represent…a new point of departure on the road to a normalisation of relations between the Church and the State in Cuba,” the papal envoy told the press before heading back to Rome.

He refused to comment on whether he and Castro discussed details of a meeting between the Pope and the Cuban president in Rome in mid-November on the occasion of the U.N.-sponsored World Food Summit.

A source close to the Archbishop of Havana told IPS that very important for the success of the official talks was Tauran’s ability to see the “false steps” taken in the past in bilateral relations as the result of a “misunderstanding” rather than “ill will.”

“I don’t believe we are looking at a 180 degree change, but rather at a phase of understanding, reaffirmed by visible gestures that demonstrate the existence of points of agreement and of an official attempt to smooth out rough edges,” said the source, who preferred to remain anonymous.

He cited Foreign Minister Roberto Robaina’s invitation — termed “unusual” by observers — for Cardinal Ortega to attend the reception held for Tauran with members of the diplomatic corps, as well as the attendance of the president of the Cuban parliament, Ricardo Alarcon.

“Relations between the Church and the State cannot be reduced to guaranteeing a stable legal framework” for religious practices, Tauran said in a sermon delivered in Havana.

Hundreds of faithful were joined by the curious to fill the Church of Saint Rita during Tauran’s mass last Sunday. Church authorities set up amplifiers outside the church so those who packed the adjoining park could also hear the sermon.

Tauran referred to “a new ecclesial springtime in Cuba,” while pointing out that “to reduce religious practice, or a Christian lifestyle, to merely cultural expressions is to mutilate the life of faith.”

Analysts say the significant rise in the number of Cubans regularly attending Catholic church in the 1990s is a reflection of increased government tolerance towards religious practices, and of the need to “believe in something” in times of difficulty (Cuba has been caught in the grip of a brutal economic crisis for over six years).

The boom in church-goers, not only limited to the Catholic Church, includes people who hid their beliefs to avoid being labelled “opponents” of the government, new believers who have suddenly found consolation in religion, and people trying out a new fad, according to analysts.

In the short-term, Tauran’s visit laid the groundwork for the entry of a larger number of priests, nuns and lay-workers into Cuba to meet a growing demand for services by the faithful, which local churches are presently unable to satisfy due to a lack of personnel.

Other questions “require further evaluation,” said Tauran. But they are set to be resolved shortly through an in-depth dialogue between politicians, the Conference of Catholic Bishops and the Papal Nuncio in Cuba.

The Church’s demands include greater space to provide help to the needy and carry out human promotion and social development projects, permission to build new churches, and access to the media — in particular the authorisation of the Church’s own media space, which observers say is the most controversial of the demands.

“The political community and the Church are independent and autonomous,” Tauran said in Havana.

But local authorities find it hard to forget the decisive role the Catholic Church played in the demise of socialism in Europe in the late 1980s.

“The dialogue with the Church is of mutual convenience. But that doesn’t mean there is suddenly an absolute trust in Cuba,” one Catholic church-goer who is studying Church-State relations told IPS.

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