c. 1996 Religion News Service

HAVANA (RNS)-From his pulpit in the landmark Our Lady of Carmen Church, the Rev. Theodoro Becerril watched for years with alarm as the Catholic Church declined, withered and nearly died in communist Cuba.

From his vantage point, over a span of 38 years, Becerril witnessed the slow but steady disappearance of his flock. Elderly churchgoers, traditionally the most dedicated parishioners, died or fled Cuba, and the young never seemed to show the same interest.

For Becerril, a Spanish-born priest who was assigned to Our Lady of Carmen a year before Fidel Castro’s rebels took power in 1959, it was all he could do to attract enough people to Mass.

But now, Cubans are packing churches from Santiago in the east to Havana in the west. Christenings are up, donations have increased, and the number of priests has grown from 200 in the late 1980s to some 250 today.

Becerril says: “I think people are looking for inner strength and meaning. They are not afraid anymore. They used to feel frightened by government repression.”

Now, he says, “They feel a great sense of freedom. That was a fundamental reason for the return to the church.”

The rebirth of religion began in 1991 when the government decreed for the first time that one could be a good communist and still be devoutly religious. In a country where adherence to religion could bring discrimination in the workplace, the declaration had an immediate impact.

At Becerril’s church, located on a busy street in central Havana, the parish’s new life has left him busier than ever. Just last year, he baptized 2,000 children and 200 adults-numbers unheard of in years past.

The revival is especially noteworthy because the church is the only entity with the potential to bring about political and social change in Cuba. The Catholic Church is the only large institution not directly controlled by the government. Its priests have the ears of hundreds of thousands, and its officials are in constant contact with the Vatican and church leaders in other countries, including the United States.

Some political activity has already taken place.

In eastern Cuba, a young priest named Jose Conrado Rodriguez has drawn attention with his vocal lashings of the government. And when Cuban fighter jets in February downed two private American planes-killing four Miami men-Cuba’s bishops issued a collective condemnation.

However, those hoping for the church to form an opposition party will probably be disappointed, church leaders here say.

“People here are not looking for political discourse. They are searching for a greater meaning in life,” says Rolando Cabrera, secretary to Cardinal Jaime Ortega. “They are searching for words to live by, for the words from El Senor that all of us need.”

Church leaders and ordinary Cubans say there was never official repression of the church, but that the climate in Cuba was not one of inclusion for those devoted to religion. Because the pre-revolutionary church was seen as an organization that served the rich, the government expelled priests and nuns and took over parochial schools as it rushed to consolidate communism in the early 1960s.

In the last few years, though, the relationship between church and state has improved dramatically.

Many see it as part of the economic liberalization that the regime has put in place to steer Cuba out of economic stagnation.

Others believe Cubans are simply fed up with communist orthodoxy, which once taught the evils of organized religion.

Castro, who was educated by Jesuits, has met with envoys from the Vatican in recent years. Party leaders are sometimes seen in church. And the social welfare agency Caritas, which receives much of its assistance from Catholics in the United States, has poured $20 million into housing and health care programs in the last five years, says Rolando Suarez, national head of the agency.

At Sacred Heart, one of this city’s many historic churches, Jorge Luis Vivas used his day off to pray before the Virgin Mary. Vivas, who practices a mix of Catholicism and Santeria, the Afro-Caribbean religion popular among many Cubans, says he has noticed the recent surge in attendance.

“There were people who didn’t have the valor to go to church,” he says. “People maybe now feel that since things are loosening up, they can make up for not having gone to church.”

Patricia Andujar, a 19-year-old medical student at the University of Havana, says she has seen more students join religious groups and attend church. A member of the Movement of Catholic University Students, Andujar says she is heartened to see her classmates attend Mass.

For a long time, the church’s mission was just to stay alive, she says.

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Andujar notes that being devoted to God still runs counter to Communist Party ideology, which teaches that the ideal person is an atheist. “Philosophically, it’s at odds,” she says.

Tom Quigley, policy adviser on Latin American and Caribbean affairs for the U.S. Catholic Conference, says the Cuban church is in dire need of more clergy.

“It’s an old clergy and there are not very many young men coming in,” he says.

Quigley says the church in Cuba is too dependent on outside Catholic groups.

Yet most observers agree the future is brighter than the past.

“I think the outlook is very promising because the church is not in the business of overthrowing the regime and is not in the business of keeping the regime in power,” says Mario Paredes, director of the New York-based Northeast Pastoral Center for Hispanics, which organizes exchange programs and has established pastoral contacts with Cuban bishops.

Rather, Paredes says, “The church is in the business of creating Christian communities.”

MJP END FORERO