Castro, Cuba, and Christianity

Press, 7 February 1986, Page 17

Castro, Cuba, and Christianity

GEOFFREY MATTHEWS

reports on Cuba's

current best-selling book: a series of interviews with Fidel Castro outlining his sometimes surprising views on the Roman Catholic Church, Christ, and Christianity.

Once,-during a meeting with a United States diplomat, President Fidel Castro noted that both were Jesuit-educated. Roman Catholics. “Yes,” replied the American, ‘/but I remain Fidel."

The pun — Fidel means faithful in Spanish — was made by Vernon Walters, then United’’ States ambassador-at-large, during a secret visit to Cuba’s capital Havana.' Walters, who speaks several languages and who is now the Reagan Administration’s ambassador ,at the United Nations, was making clever use of his linguistic skills. Castro enjoyed the joke. But a current runaway bestseller in Cuba, “Fidel and Religion”, presents the Cuba leader in a different light:- as, if not quite a born-again Christian, then certainly as an admirer. 'of Christ’s teaching, who disagreed with Karl Marx that religion is the opiate of the people. In the book Castro, aged 59, expresses hopes that Pope John Paul II will visit Cuba, fuelling

already Widespread rumours that the Roman Catholic church’s leader may call in at Havana after his scheduled visit to Colombia in July. The Vatican has not discounted the possibility and the Pope is known to be keen to visit Cuba.

“Any interest of the Pope to visit our country does us great honour, and- furthermore it would be an act of great valour because it isn’t just any head of state who is prepared to take the (political) risk of visiting Cuba.” Castro says.

Church-State relations in this island nation have been strained since the 1959 Cuban revolution. Today, it is estimated there are only 80,000 practising Catholics in a population of about 1,0 million. Only 41 of* the population is now counted as nominally catholic, compared with 90 per cent before the revolution. There are also • only 215 priests, a quarter of the prerevolution figure.

The chief victims of the revolution were the Jesuits, towards

whom Castro has always felt particular hositility as a result of his schooling: all were kicked out Church schools were closed, and Cuban Christians complain that they are discriminated against when applying for Government jobs.

The book is drawn from 23 hours of interviews Castro granted Friar Betto, born Carlos Alberto Libanio, a Dominican priest from Sao Paulo, Brazil. As a Leftist church man who embraces liberation theology and is a supporter of the Cuban revolution, Friar Betto was never likely to prove an incisive, probing interviewer, and so it turns out. Nevertheless, Castro’s pronoucements are always interesting and often surprising. The Cuban leader grew up in the Oriente province of Cuba. His father, a landowner from Galicia in Spain, had no time for religion and Castro was not baptised until he was five or six. His mother, who came from more humble origins, was a “fervent Christian”. however.

Castro told Friar Betto: “If someone were to ask me, ‘When did you have a religious conviction?’ I’d have to say I never really had one. I just never had a true religious faith or belief in those days, nor in school were they able to inculcate me with those values ... but religion did later come to exercise great influence on my political and revolutionary vocation.” It was during his education by the Jesuits that Castro first heard communism mentioned. His Jesuit teachers, who were all from Spain and supporters of the Franco dictatorship, aroused Castro’s curiosity by fiercely condemning Spanish Communists. But Castro also grew to loathe the Jesuits for the rigid religious regimen they imposed during both his school and university education: “Early each morning, one had to get up and go to Mass without eating; breakfast came afterwards. It was the same ritual every day. I think that was purely mechanical. “The obligation of going to

Mass every day was a total excess, and I don’t think that kind of thing — forcing a boy to go to Mass — helps him.” "Then there were the prayers. Well, my thinking is that the mere fact of repeating a prayer 100 times — how many ‘Ave Marias’ and ‘Our Fathers’ I must have said — had no positive impact.” Nor could he accept the terrible vision of hell conjured up by the Jesuits: “Really, I don’t know how they could invent such a cruel he 11... and there was no proportion between big sins and simple little sins. Even a doubt — to doubt something one didn’t understand about some determined dogma — was a sin.”

As a result of the Jesuit education, Castro became convinced that religious faith could never be acquired through “mechanical, dogmatic, and irrational methods.”

In contrast, the materialist logic of Marxism was immediately attractive because of its “simplicity, clarity, and the

direct way with which it outlined an explanation of our world and our society. I think one can be a Marxist without ceasing to be a Christian?”

Of Che Guevara, his comrade in arms during the revolutionary struggle, and a left-wing cult figure in the 19605, Castro says: “Yes, Che was a Catholic — and he had all the virtues to have been made a saint.” Castro admits that Cuban Church-State relations were strained when the revolution clashed with privileged sectors. “However, there has not been one case of a bishop shot, or a priest shot, nor one instance of a priest being mistreated physically, tortured, nor have there been such cases involving laymen.”

He also claims: “Not one single church has been closed — not one, ever. Yes, there were cases at a determined moment in which political confrontation was very strong, when it became necessary to suspend the authorisation to stay here of some

priests, above all of Spanish origin, because of their militant political attitude (against the revolution). “However, it was authorised that others (foreign priests) could come and replace those who left. Later, relations were normalised. Today, they are based on co-existence, on mutual respect between the party and the Church.”

Castro also Insists that Cubans enjoy religous freedom: “The most strict respect towards the religious beliefs of citizens is established and guaranteed in our constitution. That is not simply a political tactic; respect for the faithful is a political principle.

Always frank, Castro then drops something of a bombshell, telling Friar Betto: “If you ask me whether there exists a certain kind of subtle discrimination against Christians, I honestly have to say yes. It isn’t intentional, it isn’t deliberate, it isn’t programmed, but it exists. I think we have to overcome it.

Conditions of trust must be created ... (but) imperialism still threatens us and there are still many here — former landowners and privileged classes — ready to convert religion into a counter-revolutionary ideology.”

He adds: “Here is a group of citizens who for reasons of religious nature feel that they are not understood, even that they are the object of some kind of political discrimination ... then we cannot feet satisfied with ourselves.”

The Cuban leader perceived no contradiction between his politics and admiration for Jesus Christ: "Ever since I had the use of reason, the name of Jesus Christ was one of the most familiar in my home and at school. It also projected my attention of the revolutionary aspects of Christian doctrine and Christ’s thinking. I never saw any contradiction between the ideas that sustain me and the Ideas of that symbol, of the extraordinary figure.”