A small order of Catholic clergy has become a beloved and indispensable part of the community in Placetas, offering survival essentials to its economically devastated population of about 40,000 souls.

The priests have become, in part, a surrogate for the government, which in Cuba has political control over just about every aspect of life — though in practice it cannot always deliver where it is needed most.

From Placetas, four French priests have set up three-day care centres, five soup kitchens, an after-school centre, a boarding school and an old-age home serving about 70,000 people of the larger district in the centre of the island nation.

"In Cuba, the Church is… putting a foot in the door so that it stays open," smiled 38-year-old Jean Pichon, one of the four clerics who moved to Placetas 15 years ago.

But he insisted "the idea is not to convert people or to seek a more prominent role, but truly to help."

‘No more medicine'

The beige-walled church on one of the town's squares has become a popular gathering spot for members of the community.

On Thursdays, the priests meet youngsters from Placetas on a field near the church to play football.

On the same block, a soup kitchen feeds the hungry twice a week, a library is open to all and, crucially for many, a makeshift pharmacy dispenses free medications that the priests get from Europe.

These are all services that fall under the purview of Cuba's one-party state.

But the government in Havana has recently moved to reduce Cubans' reliance on free essential services — announcing it will cut subsidies for food and other basics in a bid to entice people into the workplace and revitalize the economy.

The country is battling its worst economic crisis in 30 years, fueled by six decades of American sanctions and the collapse of its critical tourism sector due to the coronavirus epidemic.

"I am 53 and this is the worst (time) I've ever experienced," said Tania Perez, who in non-pandemic times rents out a room to tourists in Placetas and relies heavily on the medicines the priests provide.

"My mother has only 20 days' worth of pills left and her medicine cannot be found. Without it, she cannot walk. Me, I suffer from lupus and I have no more medicine," Perez said.

Providing support

Every Wednesday, a van comes with fresh supplies for the Placetas pharmacy. The night before, some people sleep outside to make sure they can get what they need.

In smaller towns nearby, people tell of having to wait four days in a queue for medicine.

In such difficult times, the Church "could not and did not want to remain on the sidelines," said Arturo Gonzalez Amador, bishop of Santa Clara — the capital of Villa Clara province, where Placetas is located.

He too was quick to stress that the Church was "not creating a parallel structure" to the state, saying: "We are providing support."

Mistrust and fear

"At first, there was a lot of mistrust" from the authorities, "maybe even a bit of fear," said Pichon of the Church's growing presence.

After the revolution, the new communist state in 1961 seized the assets of the Catholic Church, including schools and clinics.

More than 130 priests were expelled.

The country was atheist until 1992 when it amended its laws to become officially secular. However, a government office of religious affairs still regulates anything to do with worship.

Today, the country of 11.2 million has only 300 Catholic priests — half of them foreign.

According to Church estimates, 60 per cent of Cubans are baptized — but only two per cent attend Mass.

Practising Catholics are still prohibited from working for certain government ministries in a country where the state is the main employer. Continue reading

• Katell Abiven
• Image: 24 Matins

Ringed by mountains and far from the capital, Beijing, it has long been a haven for a religion that China's Communist leaders view with deep unease: Christianity.

Most cities of its size, with about 9m people, have no more than a dozen or so visibly Christian buildings.

Until recently, in Wenzhou, hundreds of crosses decorated church roofs.

This year, however, more than 230 have been classed as "illegal structures" and removed.

Videos posted on the internet show crowds of parishioners trying to form a human shield around their churches.

Dozens have been injured. Other films show weeping believers defiantly singing hymns as huge red crosses are hoisted off the buildings.

In April one of Wenzhou's largest churches was completely demolished.

Officials are untroubled by the clash between the city's famously freewheeling capitalism and the Communist Party's ideology, yet still see religion and its symbols as affronts to the party's atheism.

Christians in China have long suffered persecution.

Under Mao Zedong, freedom of belief was enshrined in the new Communist constitution (largely to accommodate Muslims and Tibetan Buddhists in the west of the country).

Yet perhaps as many as half a million Christians were harried to death, and tens of thousands more were sent to labour camps.

Since the death of Mao in 1976, the party has slowly allowed more religious freedom.

Most of the churches in Wenzhou are so-called "Three Self" churches, of which there are about 57,000 round the country.

These, in the official jargon, are self-supporting, self-governed and self-propagating (therefore closed to foreign influence).

They profess loyalty to China, and are registered with the government.

But many of those in Wenzhou had obviously incurred official displeasure all the same; and most of the Christians who survived Maoist persecution, along with many new believers, refuse to join such churches anyway, continuing to meet in unregistered "house churches", which the party for a long time tried to suppress. Continue reading

Sources

• The Economist
• Image: The Telegraph

The gesture came days after President Raul Castro welcomed the appointment of Pope Francis as the first-ever Latin American pontiff.

Last year the Cuban government observed a holiday on Good Friday as an "exceptional" gesture following a request by Pope Benedict XVI, who had just visited the island in March.

Continue reading

Authorities told parishioners that the building was to be used "for village activities, not for worship".

Continue reading

"It won't work without the concept of the good," Gysi wrote.

"But modern science can't tell us what is good. Its concepts focus on empirical experience. Ideas such as morality play no role there."

Gysi described Benedict as a modern theologian, one who says societies need both religious traditions and arguments to forge the moral consensus they need to operate.

"The pope says neither can do this alone," he wrote.

"That a pope says that about religion is not necessarily something one could have expected."

"One must simply recognize that cultural traditions, including religion, are resources" that transmit social norms, he wrote. "There seems to be something prior to and outside of the law that can act as a benchmark for it."

"In our world full of tension, this insight is the best justification for tolerance in a democratic state," Gysi said. "We don't have to follow this or that norm, but we must appreciate that there are norms, and some of them are good."

The comments by Gysi came as a surprise. Reuters describes Gysi as 'a sharp-tongued leader coming from a secular Jewish family'.

Sources

• CathNews USA
• Reuters
• Image: Zimbo