Religious liberty is growing in Cuba after a half-century of repression, and the Roman Catholic Church is more able to pursue a humanitarian, public mission than it has been for many years, the archbishop of Havana said Thursday in Omaha.
Cardinal Jaime Lucas Ortega y Alamino said his mediation between the Cuban government and political prisoners' families has led to the release of 126 prisoners of conscience in the past year. He said that would not have been possible before Raul Castro's elevation as the successor to his brother Fidel as Cuba's leader.
Ortega spoke to more than 100 people on the campus of Creighton University, where he is to receive an honorary doctor of law degree this weekend.
The honor is for a life dedicated to promoting religious freedom in Cuba, said the Rev. John Schlegel, Creighton's retiring president. Schlegel had, as the University of San Francisco president, given Ortega an honorary degree 11 years ago. Schlegel also engineered this week's visit of Ortega to Omaha.
Introducing Ortega, Schlegel said the Cuban cardinal was ordained a priest in 1964 during a time of repression and spent nearly a year in a forced labor camp in the 1960s. He said Ortega, named archbishop of Havana in 1981, launched a process that led to Pope John Paul II's historic visit to Cuba in 1998.
While generally credited with paving the way for religious tolerance in Cuba, Ortega also has critics, especially among some Cuban emigres in the United States. They say the Catholic Church has done too little through the years to oppose the regime in Cuba.
Ortega appeared to address those critics as part of a 90-minute talk Thursday. He read his speech in Spanish, and a hastily drafted interpreter translated his speech into English.
Ortega said he loves Cuba with all his heart and never thought to leave it — not even when his father had arranged for him to go to Spain after his labor camp sentence ended.
Initially, he said, the 1959 Cuban revolution met with “great acceptance” in the church hierarchy and the general public because they saw many shared values in it.
Then about a year later, partly because of the presence of priests in the Bay of Pigs invasion, many priests were expelled, Catholic schools were closed and many clergy left out of fear.
The national seminary was occupied and closed. The Catholic Church was left without a means to communicate with the faithful. There followed a long period of state atheism in which the church was repressed, Ortega said.
“The (church's) attitude was patience, perseverance, prudence” for many years, he said. Bishops urged people to hold to their faith and live it as testimony, Ortega said.
That era continued until the 1980s, he said. In 1981, Ortega said, Cuban bishops began a five-year process of reflection that culminated in the 1986 Cuban National Ecclesial Meeting. The Catholic Church went from a “very fearful church wrapped up in itself” to one that sought dialogue with all of Cuba, including Cuban authorities.
Among signs of increasing religious liberty that he cited: the ability to distribute religious publications, the ability of students and clergy to study abroad and the opening last year of a new Cuban seminary.
Contact the writer:
402-444-1057, christopher.burbach@owh.com
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