History
After the communist revolution of 1959, Cuba restricted religious practice; this led to persecution of many Catholics at universities and jobs. Today, the government recognizes the right of citizens to profess and practice any religious belief within the framework of respect for the law.
From 1957 to 1961 eighty percent of the professional Catholic priests and Protestant ministers left Cuba for the United States. Relationships between the new government and congregations were tense, and the new Cuban government was very limiting and suspicious of church operations, blaming them for collaboration with the CIA during the Bay of Pigs invasion and stockpiling arms provided for a "counter-revolution".
In accordance with the traditional antireligious doctrine of Marxist-Leninist ideology, the state adopted a policy of promoting atheism. Religious beliefs were considered backward, reactionary, ignorant, and superstitious. The 'Committees for Defense of the Revolution' said:
It is not good for your children to go to church.
Studies appeared that attempted to link Afro-Cuban religions with mental illness. The campaign for the eradication of racial discrimination in Cuba was (and still is) used as grounds to forbid the creation of Afro-Cuban institutions, because doing so was labelled as racially divisive.
Religious believers suffered from discrimination at schools and at work.
The decade following the 1960s was turbulent, and many believers chose to hide their faith in response to state persecution. Many parents did not wish to burden their children with the difficulties they would inherit if they were baptized Christians, and therefore did not raise them as such. The Archdiocese of Havana in 1971 reported only 7000 baptisms. In 1989 this figure had increased to 27,609 and in 1991 to 33,569.
In 1985 the Council of State in Havana published a best-selling book called Fidel y la Religion, which was the condensed transcription of 23 hours of interviews between Fidel Castro and a Brazilian liberation theology friar named Frei Betto, O.P. He claimed responsibility for excluding non-atheists from Communist Party membership on grounds that:
What we were demanding was complete adherence to Marxism-Leninism...It was assumed that anybody who joined the party would accept the party's policy and doctrine in all aspects.
In the years following and after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the state adopted a more conciliatory position towards religion and lessened its promotion of atheism. In November 1991, the Communist Party began to allow believers into its ranks. In July 1992, the constitution was amended to remove the definition of Cuba as being a state based on Marxism-Leninism, and article 42 was added, which prohibited discrimination on the basis of religious belief. Small worship centres were legally permitted to exist again.
Nevertheless, by the early 1990s, after three decades of state atheism, Cuban society had become almost totally secularized. Weekly church attendance on the island of 11 million was estimated at around 250,000 or about 2% of the population (with an even division between Catholics and Protestants). Cuba had fewer priests per inhabitant than any other Latin American country.
Since 1992, restrictions have been eased, and direct challenges by state institutions to the right to believe eased somewhat, though the church still faces restrictions of written and electronic communication and can only accept donations from state-approved funding sources. The Roman Catholic Church is made up of the Cuban Catholic Bishops' Conference (CCBC), led by Jaime Lucas Ortega y Alamino, Cardinal Archbishop of Havana. It has eleven dioceses, 56 orders of nuns and 24 orders of priests.
The Cuban Bishops' conference has been very critical of the US embargo against Cuba and has claimed that the entire population has suffered from it. The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has been influenced by this and has argued that food and medicine should be excluded from the embargo.
In January 1998, Pope John Paul II paid a historic visit to the island, invited by the Cuban government and Catholic Church. He criticized the US embargo during his visit.
On October 20, 2008, the first Orthodox Church in Cuba opened during an official ceremony attended by Raul Castro.
Read more about this topic: Religion In Cuba
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