Havana, Cuba
Reuters
Cuba’s churches have defended those who participated in unprecedented protests and even set up a hotline to advise the families of detainees, a sign of increasing boldness from spiritual leaders on the Communist-run island.
Protests erupted nationwide on 11th July against shortages of medicine and food, power outages, the COVID-19 surge and curbs on freedom. The government blamed counter-revolutionaries it said were exploiting hardships caused by decades-old US sanctions.
People pass by in front of the Havana’s Cathedral, Cuba, on 19th July. PICTURE: Reuters/Alexandre Meneghini
Hundreds of protesters, activists and journalists have since been detained, according to human rights groups. Authorities say they are prosecuting those who instigated “unpatriotic unrest” and committed vandalism.
In the days following the protests, the dominant Roman Catholic church and representatives of other religions issued statements in favour of free expression. After decades of repression following the 1959 revolution, an expansion of religious freedoms in the 1990s has given religious groups greater autonomy than any other organisation not affiliated with the Communist Party. But such candor is still rare in Cuba, where significant restrictions on dissent remain in place.
“Amid the difficulties, the protests of recent days and also the detentions, the repression, the Church wants to pray for all Cubans, for all Cuba,” Dionisio García, Archbishop of Santiago de Cuba, the country’s second largest city, said in a televised mass on Sunday.
The Cuban people need changes to feel hope, he said at the Church of the Virgin of Charity of El Cobre, the patron saint of a country where an estimated 60 per cent are baptised Catholics.
Protestant denominations also backed the protesters’ right to express themselves, with the Methodist Church stating in a post shared on social media on Saturday: “The fact of disagreeing with the political system does not turn a person into an antisocial element or criminal.”
All urged both protesters and authorities to avoid violence in favor of dialogue. The conference of Catholic bishops expressed concern the government’s response would instead be “immobility” and even a “hardening of positions.”
The Catholic Church in particular has played an important role in Cuban society in recent years, negotiating the release of political prisoners and fomenting the 2014 detente with old Cold War foe the United States.
But government critics have at times accused the church of not doing enough to confront authorities over human rights, in favor of a fragile entente that allows them a seat at the table of power. That may be changing.
In his weekly address to the faithful in St Peter’s Square at the Vatican on Sunday, Pope Francis, the first Latin American pontiff, said he felt close to those families in Cuba suffering the most in these “difficult moments”.
“I pray that the Lord might help the nation construct a society that is more and more just and fraternal through peace, dialogue and solidarity,” he said.
The Cuban Conference of Catholic Religious opened a helpline for those detained and their relatives on Sunday.
“This is focused on providing counsel for the presentation of habeas corpus, help in locating the detainees, and spiritual and psychological guidance for the relatives,” it said.
Meanwhile, as tensions rise in Cuba and grudges resurface against the US, the Catholic Church is once again attempting mediation.
“We urge the United States to seek the peace that comes from reconciliation and concord between our countries,” read a 19th July statement signed by the president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Archbishop José H Gomez of Los Angeles.
Together with the Holy See and bishops in Cuba, the episcopacy in the US also “called for robust cultural and commercial engagement between the United States and Cuba as the means to assist the island in achieving greater prosperity and social transformation.”
The US bishops and Pope Francis have often spoken out against the economic embargo that has strangled the Cuban economy for decades.
– With CLAIRE GIANGRAVE, RNS
