Cuba celebrated its first official Good Friday holiday in more than half a century, an "exceptional" holiday declared by President Raul Castro after a request by Pope Benedict XVI during his visit last month. "It's a blessing of the Pope," Catholic nun Teresa Vaz said of the declaration. Vaz, a Portuguese missionary, came to Cuba for the first time in the 1980s, and said she has since then seen a change in the government's acceptance of Catholic practice.
"Today's Cuba is not the same Cuba of back then," she said. In the communist country, which was for decades officially atheist, recent years have seen an incipient resurgence of Catholic faith. John Paul II's historic 1998 visit returned the Catholic church to the island after decades of hostilities with the government of Fidel Castro. In the wake of the visit, the elder Castro made Christmas a public holiday for Cubans. Since Raul Castro took power in 2006, the church has made further gains, and now hopes that Benedict's visit will help to consolidate its place in Cuban society.
"There are a lot of people who are coming around out of curiosity, like the Catholic church is becoming fashionable," said Karina de Torner, 38, parish secretary at a Havana church. The Vatican counts 70 per cent of Cuba's 11 million inhabitants as Catholic. But after more than a half-century of socialism, Cuba is not a country of fervent Catholic faith.
"We live Holy Week intensely, but we're quiet about it," said de Torner. In her church, Good Friday's Way of the Cross procession is held in private, in an interior courtyard, due to difficulties obtaining a permit from authorities. Havana's archdiocese holds its own procession in a central neighbourhood, and a number of local parishes mark Holy Week with small, modest celebrations.
In addition to santeria, a religion which blends Christian practices with African rites, the island is home to old Catholic traditions that have survived, discreetly and privately. "I've been going to church and not eating meat during Holy Week for my whole life," said Nieves Cordoba, 79, who says she maintained the Catholic faith of her youth despite having been married to a state official.
"I respected his revolution, and he respected my beliefs," she recalled. Although it was never officially prohibited, Catholicism was viewed poorly in past decades, especially by members of Cuba's Communist Party. In recent years, however, the Church has played a more public role on the island. The traditional Good Friday sermon by Cardinal Jaime Ortega, archbishop of Havana, was broadcast on Cuban state television, as were sermons by the pope during his visit March 26-28. That visit raised hopes among the faithful that the government might go a step further and allow the church a place in education, as Benedict asked in a speech on Havana's Plaza de la Revolucion.
"Many of us live with the golden dream that religious schools will return," said De Torner, who said many of her family members attended Catholic schools in the years before 1959. But Vaz, the missionary, who teaches children informally in churches, is not optimistic. "They only tolerate us because they (the government) can't cover their needs." Public education in Cuba is officially in the hands of the state.