Policy of Empowerment: Pope Francis in Cuba

Abstract

IntroductionPope Francis spent four days on Cuban soil in September 2015. During these days, he visited three cities: Havana, Holguin and Santiago de Cuba. I participated in the visit as an observer invited by the Conference of Catholic Bishops in Cuba(Conferencia de Obispos Catolicos de Cuba). In Havana, I joined the delegation of the Conference and participated in the events in the same manner as the Catholic invitees such as foreign bishops, Cuban clergy and religious, and diplomatic representatives. This included both events open to the public as well as events for a selected audience. In Holguin and Santiago de Cuba, I focused on observing the visit among the Cubans participating in the public events, with a concentration on interpreting the responses of the audience and commentaries of the audience to the events.During and following the visit, I conducted interviews with Cuban bishops, clergy, members of the religious orders present in Cuba as well as Cubans both Catholic and non-Catholic who either participated in the events of the papal visit or chose not to participate in them. In this article, apart from my own reflections and analysis as a participant in the visit, I refer to those interviews as anonymous sources. From this perspective, I analyse the expectations, interpretations and outcomes of the papal visit, focusing on the dynamics of the apostolic journey as well as reactions and responses of the Catholic Church in Cuba and Cuban Catholics to Pope Francis's message and the purpose of the visit.Cuba and the Holy SeeIn the books of the Holy See,1 Cuba has occupied a particular chapter ever since Fidel Castro's revolution in 1959. The Catholic Church, rooted in Cuba during the Colonial era, has existed within the socialist system for the past six decades. The coexistence of the Catholic Church and the Cuban revolutionary regime has nevertheless been characterised by mutual tension, conflict and confrontation.The confrontation between the Catholic Church in Cuba and the Cuban revolution experienced its most tense stages in the 1960s. The cultural, collective memory of the Cuban Catholics still recalls the experience of alienation and marginalisation in the Cuban society and public life. The living memory still accounts for suspicion and, at times, hostility, among the older generations of Cuban Catholics both on the island and in exile. The institutional church has, however, reached a renewed position and newly gained visibility in the Cuban public sphere in the twenty-first century. From the confrontation of the 1960s and the decade of marginalised silence and introspection of the 1970s, the church reorganised itself in order to provide for internal revival in the 1980s and reemerge in the Cuban society in the 1990s in order to fill the void of ideological and existential searching among Cubans, caused by the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Special Period2 and the removal of the atheist ideal from the Cuban constitution, all occurring simultaneously in the first half of the 1990s.Throughout the revolutionary era, the most crucial challenge in the conflict between the church and the state has been defining the position of the Catholic Church in the Cuban society. The aspect of the transcendent in the form of God is crucial in Christian faith yet an undesired feature in Marxist ideology. Correspondingly, in Catholic teaching Marxist philosophy as materialist and atheist is seen as a threat to both humanity and religiosity. Stemming from both ideological and practical contradictions, the position and the role of the church in the Cuban revolutionary reality have been matters of both national and international politics. For a national revolution, the concept of a transnational, global actor with considerable power and influence, located outside yet rooted inside the revolution, has been ill-fitting. Confessing Catholics, while citizens of a secular nation, consider themselves belonging under the spiritual authority, leadership and rule of the Pope. …