RELIGION: Church Criticises Situation in Cuba

By Patricia Grogg Reprint | | Print |

Patricia Grogg

HAVANA, Oct 19 1999 (IPS) - The Roman Catholic Church in Cuba called Tuesday for a broad amnesty for prisoners, in a pastoral letter criticising the situation today in the Caribbean island nation, which urges Catholics to welcome the new millenium with hope.

“Forgiveness is a factor of the first order for dialogue within society,” said Cardinal Jaime Ortega in his pastoral released in Havana ahead of the “Holy Year of the Jubilee”.

“A broad amnesty of prisoners of advanced age, ill, with good behaviour or who have already served a large part of their sentences” would be like “a great pardon by society for some of its least favoured members,” said Ortega.

He stated that the prison population in Cuba was “relatively large,” while few inmates enjoyed access to direct support from priests or other religious personnel, who he said should be able to teach “the word of God” to inmates “in groups.”

Ortega’s message, considered by observers a follow-up to a document which the bishops released in 1993, “El Amor todo lo espera” (Love Waits For All), which also took a critical tone, is a new expression of the Catholic Church’s desire for a broader space to carry out its activity in Cuba.

The letter points out that the Church in Cuba does not have its own schools, lacks possibilities for participating in educating the young, and has no regular presence in the mass media.

“Only prayer has been able to keep the Church going in its pastoral work throughout these years, with extremely scant human and material resources, and facing real tension and difficulties,” said Ortega.

Detailing his concerns and hopes on the threshold of the new millenium, the head of the Catholic Church in Cuba spoke out harshly against the high levels of divorce and abortion, and the system of boarding schools in rural areas which are obligatory for students planning to continue on to university.

“The family is the first educator of its children, and parents should thus assert their right to have their children educated in their homes while attending school as day pupils,” states the document.

The government defends the system by which students live in boarding schools in rural areas, as it combines work and study. It is obligatory for pre-university students, unless they have certified health problems.

Ortega said that Cuba’s Catholics should enter the third millenium free of hopelessness, a problem present to some extent everywhere, “but which affects many in Cuba in a special way.

“The sociological signs of hopelessness are already among us: very few children are born, and many women of child-bearing age fail to leave a girl child to replace them,” he warned.

Cuba is facing the challenge of the ageing of the population, as a result of the drop in fertility and death rates. According to government statistics, the elderly – over 60 – will account for 24 percent of the population by the year 2025.

“Our population is shrinking, and that is without even counting the large numbers who emigrate,” said Ortega, who on more than one occasion refers in the document to the material difficulties facing the country’s 11 million inhabitants.

“The food situation has slightly improved, above all for those who receive monetary support from their families abroad, and because agricultural production has grown somewhat in Havana. But nutritional deficiencies are still far from overcome,” he said.

The Pastoral Letter reiterates the Catholic Church’s condemnation of the almost 40-year-old U.S. economic blockade against Cuba, which Pope John Paul II termed during his January 1998 visit to Cuba “unjust and ethically unacceptable.”

On more than one occasion, Cuba’s bishops have expressed “rejection of all that could pile additional hardship and difficulties on the Cuban people and hinder their development. The Pope and the bishops of Cuba have referred to the embargo in these terms,” he stated.

The document makes a call for unity among Catholics and members of other Christian churches. “There is just one God the Father, who is also the Father of those who profess different creeds,” it states.

The religious spectrum in Cuba is made up of the Catholic Church, more than 40 protestant denominations, Judaism, and expressions of African or other origins like spiritualism and voodoo.

Ortega concludes his letter with a call to all Catholics to attend the Dec 25 opening of the Holy Year of the Jubilee, when the book of the Gospel will be carried in procession to the Havana Cathedral.

“This walk to the Cathedral will be a symbol of the route of faith and hope that the Church must take in the next century and millenium,” said the cardinal.

The message “Love Waits For All”, which preceded the latest pastoral letter in importance, gave rise to tension in the relations between the socialist government of Fidel Castro and the Catholic Church.

But relations thawed, and a climate of detente surrounded the Pope’s historic visit.

Among the demands achieved by the Catholic Church in Cuba in the wake of John Paul’s visit was the recovery of the Christmas holiday and permission to hold open-air religious services.