Church in Cuba Steps out of the Shadows

Saturday's beatification ceremony at Camagüey, about 300 miles from Havana, was broadcast by state television and heralded by a front-page article.

CAMAGUEY, Cuba ( The Catholic Herald, UK) - Cuban president Raul Castro attended his country's first beatification ceremony last Saturday in a historic gesture of support for the Church.

His unexpected arrival was greeted with applause by thousands of people who had come from all over Cuba to attend the beatification of 19th-century Brother José Olallo.

His presence is being seen as a signal to the nation's Catholics that despite decades of repression by the Communist government they should feel free to express their faith.

In the early years of the revolution hundreds of priests were expelled or forced to work in labour camps and anyone who declared their faith openly was barred from many jobs.
The country's Catholic education system was also dismantled.

But after the collapse of the Soviet bloc the state softened its hard-line stance and in 1992 it amended its constitution so that it was no longer officially atheist.

Saturday's beatification ceremony at Camagüey, about 300 miles from Havana, was broadcast by state television and heralded by a front-page article in the state-run newspaper.

Cardinal José Saraiva Martins, former prefect of the Vatican Congregation for the Cause of Saints, said the beatification was a "landmark" for Cuba.

He was joined at the ceremony by Cuban Cardinal Jaime Ortega, papal nuncio Archbishop Luigi Bonazzi, and about 20 other Cuban and foreign bishops.

Doves were released and bells rung as Brother Olallo's remains were carried in a gold-coloured urn through the city.

It was the first ever beatification ceremony to be held in Cuba - though Brother Olallo is not the first Cuban to be beatified. José López Piteira was beatified last year in Spain where he died during the Spanish Civil War.

Brother Olallo, a member of the Hospitaller Brothers of St John of God, tended the sick and wounded during Cuba's first war of independence against Spain. He was one of the few religious in the country to defy Spain's orders to leave, instead staying in Camagüey, where he worked as nurse and surgeon for more than 50 years. He became known as "the poor people's priest".

Daniela Ramos, 12, who lives in Camagüey, was cured of lymphoma thanks to Brother Olallo's intercession, the Vatican concluded this year. She attended the ceremony, saying: "I feel happy because Brother Olallo chose me to perform his miracle and because he is being beatified."

She said that all she remembered of the time she was sick was how often she had to have needles stuck in her veins.

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She had an obligation to give thanks to God, she said, "because in the hospital waiting room there were many other children, sick as I was, and they died".

She also said she planned to ask for a cure for her father, who needs a kidney transplant. "I will ask that God put his hands on all the ill children and that they are healed, since he did it for me and he reigns in peace and love over all the earth," she said.

Relations between the Church and Cuba's Communist government have improved considerably since John Paul II visited the country in 1998.

Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Vatican Secretary of State, was the first foreign visitor to meet Raul Castro after he took over the presidency earlier this year. The Vatican said at the time that Pope Benedict XVI was also keen to visit Cuba. The warmth of the relationship is all the more surprising because Raul Castro was one of the original revolutionaries and a military leader who many feared would be more hard line than his brother, Fidel.

Belisario Niepo, Latin America programme co-ordinator for development charity Progressio, said his appearance at the beatification ceremony was "unheard of". He said: "It is a way of showing that you can be Catholic and not feel threatened by [the government]. And it is closing the gap between the state and the Church."

Mr Niepo said Raul had started to allow people more freedom in general. For the first time Cubans can now buy mobiles and computers.

"But Catholics still feel apprehensive because for 50 years there has been a very tightly controlled regime, and now it is opening up it's going to take a while before people can feel relaxed about it," he said.

"And although there is freedom, problems occur when priests or other people get involved in politics and criticise human rights abuses. As an institution the Church has been seen as a kind of enemy."

A spokesman for Aid to the Church in Need, a charity that helps persecuted Christians, agreed that the situation for Catholics had improved in recent years. He said a "major breakthrough" had been the state's increasingly relaxed attitude towards processions at the national shrine, Our Lady of Charity of El Cobre. More than 90 processions were allowed over the last year.

But he said Catholics in Cuba did not have "complete freedom" and that some restrictions were still in place.

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Religious schooling is still prohibited, foreign priests and religious are usually not allowed to work there and the state refuses to return Church buildings that were seized in 1961.