Cuba and the Holy See
Cuba and the Holy See
A deepening relation of mutual respect and alliance
On June 20, 2023, Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel was received in the Vatican for a private audience by Pope Francis. Following the 37-minute encounter, Díaz-Canel reported on Twitter that it was a frank conversation, in which ample agreements were confirmed with respect to urgent issues of the international agenda for humanity.
A historic conflict not well understood
In the early 1960s, the Cuban Revolutionary Government and the Cuban Catholic Church entered conflict. The issue was not the right of Catholics to practice their religion, nor was there repression of the Church by the Cuban Revolutionary Government. Rather, the conflict emerged from the pervasive anti-communism in the Cuban Catholic Church and its participation in the counterrevolution directed from the United States.
Anticommunist ideology was an important dimension of the neocolonial republic at the time of the triumph of the Cuban Revolution in 1959. Anti-communist ideology was, in the words of Cuban scholar Jesus Arboleya, “the central nucleus of the dominant ideology [of the neocolonial republic], reaffirmed by nearly fifteen years of McCarthyist repression.” In the anti-communist worldview, “communism was associated with the repudiation of God, the persecution of believers, and the rejection of the values of Christian civilization.” It therefore was particularly influential among Catholics and Catholic student organizations.
The Catholic Church in Cuba prior to 1959 had very weak presence in the countryside and in lower- and working-class urban society. Catholic churches were located principally in middle- and upper-class urban neighborhoods, and aside from the churches, its principal presence was in the form of Catholic primary and secondary schools that served the middle and upper classes. As a result, Catholic anticommunism was principally a middle- and upper-class phenomenon.
The conflict between the Revolution and the Church of the 1960s is best understood as a dimension of a larger class conflict between, on the one side, a people’s revolution in defense of peasants, workers, professionals, small businesspersons, women, and national sovereignty; and on the other, a Cuban national bourgeoisie that was subordinate to U.S. imperialist interests, with allies in the Cuban middle class. In said conflict, members of the Cuban middle class were active participants on both sides. And the Cuban Catholic Church, with a solid social base in the Cuban middle class, became active in the counterrevolutionary activities directed from the United States. The Catholic schools were the center of this activity, which included the use of school facilities to store arms.
The triumphant Cuban Revolution did not have an anti-religious ideology. The Revolution initially had planned for the Catholic schools to continue to operate. There were practical reasons for this, in that private schools alleviated somewhat the burden of the state in providing public education. The Revolution was focused on the development of high-quality public schools for all, which it believed would gradually put most Catholic and religious schools out of business by providing a free, high-quality alternative. But with the active involvement of the Catholic schools in the counterrevolution and the violent activities of the counterrevolution, the revolutionary government decided to nationalize the private schools and incorporate the teachers and students in the public school system.
During the 1960s and 1970s, Catholic churches continued to function and to offer religious services, but religious participation declined, as a result of the Revolution’s prevailing secular ideology, according to which religion is a private matter and is not central to the construction of a just society. Religious persons with aspirations to high positions in revolutionary institutions could face discrimination or exclusion in practice, inasmuch as many of the most committed revolutionaries considered religious belief to be a sign of unenlightened thinking. For those with religious beliefs, there was a tendency toward discretion.
In 1985, Fidel granted a long interview to Frei Betto, a Brazilian Catholic priest and liberation theologian, which was subsequently published under the title Fidel y La Religión. Fidel described the religious practices of his mother, noting that he never expressed his disagreement with these practices, due to his respect for her. He discussed his appreciation for the ethical values of his teachers in Catholic primary and secondary schools, even though he could never be persuaded of the existence of a God as proclaimed in Catholic teachings. He noted that many soldiers in the revolutionary army wore religious symbols, and this practice was accepted by all as a private matter. He expressed his support for Latin American liberation theology as a manifestation of revolutionary consciousness. He declared that if the Catholic Church were to form a state and develop a society in accordance with its own teachings, it would do exactly what the Cuban Revolutionary Government has done.
The publication of Fidel y La Religión had a great impact on the evolution of Cuban revolutionary culture. In the decades since, there has evolved full constitutional and legal protection of the rights of all, regardless of religious belief. Today leaders of religious institutions are members of the National Assembly of People’s Power, and they are active and visible in Cuban civil society.
A renewed relation between Cuba and the Holy See
Bilateral relations between Cuba and the Holy See were established on February 7, 1935, and they have been maintained since that date. They survived the conflict between the Cuban Catholic Church and the Cuban Revolution in the 1960s, and they were renewed and deepened beginning in the 1990s.
On November 19, 1996, Fidel was received by Pope John Paul II in the Vatican. Following the private conversation of thirty-five minutes, Fidel declared in a press conference: “We spoke of history; we spoke of Latin America; of some religious themes with respect to Cuba, very carefully, with much consideration; and I explained to him how our Revolution never has had an antireligious spirit, never.”
In January 1998, Pope John Paul II traveled to Cuba. He was received at the airport in Havana by Fidel, and his visit of five days included offering masses in various provinces of the country. During his visit, the Pope declared: “In Cuba, one can speak of a fertile cultural dialogue, which guarantees a more harmonic growth and an increase of initiatives of creativity of the civil society. In this country, the majority of the builders of the culture—Catholic and non-Catholic, believers and non-believers—are men and women of dialogue, capable of proposing and listening.” He further famously declared that Cuba ought to open itself to the world, and the world ought to open itself to Cuba. He criticized the sanctions imposed by the USA against Cuba. The Pope’s 1998 visit to Cuba was a transcendent event in world affairs, which to some extent altered Western public opinion toward Cuba and its socialist project, vilified by decades of Cold War distortions.
In March of 2012, Pope Benedict XVI visited Cuba, where he was welcomed at the airport in Santiago de Cuba by Raúl Castro, then President of the Council of State and Ministers. Benedict offered masses in Santiago de Cuba and Havana, and he met with Raúl in the Palace of the Revolution, in an encounter that extended for an hour. Like John Paul II, Benedict criticized the coercive measures taken against Cuba.
In March 2013, Miguel Díaz-Canel, then First Vice-President of the Council of State and Ministers, headed a Cuban delegation that attended the installation of Pope Francis. The Cuban government has valued the international leadership of Pope Francis in confronting global problems, including his positions in defense of international peace, nuclear disarmament, justice, solidarity, the protection of the environment, and the struggle against social exclusion, inequality, and poverty. The Cuban government also appreciates the continuous rejection by the Holy See of the economic, commercial, and financial blockade against Cuba imposed by the government of the United States as well as its public denunciation of the unilateral sanctions applied by the United States against Cuba.
In 2015, Raúl was received by Pope Francis for a private audience that included a fifty-five-minute dialogue behind closed doors. Raúl later characterized it before the press as “a magnificent conversation.” He declared that he had come to thank the Pope for his crucial role in the reestablishment of diplomatic relations between the United Sates and Cuba. Raúl pointed out in another moment that there are many agreements between Pope Francis and the Cuban Revolution, “concerning how to eliminate inequalities, how to promote social justice.” Cuba, he noted, shares the Pope’s ideas against war and for peace and his concern for the environment.
In September of 2015, Pope Francis arrived in Cuba, thus converting Cuba into one of the few Latin American nations to have received visits from the last three pontiffs. The visit of Pope Francis was enthusiastically received by the Cuban people and the Cuban press.
In 2016, Cuba played an important role in organizing and supporting a historic encounter in Havana between Pope Francis and Patriarch Kirill, the Russian Orthodox Patriarch of Moscow and all Russia. It was the first meeting of the leaders of the two churches since 1054.
Conclusion
The mutually respectful relation between Socialist Cuba and the Holy See indicates that socialism in practice is different from what the great majority of Western analysts think. We are witnesses today of an evolving alliance between the real socialism of the countries constructing socialism and the institutions of Catholicism and Islam, based in the common principles that must guide humanity, very different from the post-modern subjectivism of today’s Radical Left.
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