Pope's visit an awakening of hope

Herald Staff Report

HAVANA -- The way Teresa Fernandez Valdes sees it, Pope John Paul II's visit to Cuba has let the genie out of the bottle. ``It's going to be very difficult to take things back. This has been a great awakening,'' said Fernandez, 61.

Whether Fernandez is right is yet to be seen. While many Cubans believe something momentous happened, they disagree widely on exactly what that was and even more on where it will lead this Communist-ruled island of 11 million people.

``There's going to be a period of quiescence now as all sides try to digest what happened,'' cautioned Margaret E. Crahan, Latin American history professor at Hunter College in New York City, who was in Havana for the papal trip.

But many Cubans, have already decided that the papal trip was little short of a miracle. ``There is great hope. That's how people truly feel,'' said Nelson Carrasco, 39.

Already, Catholic priests note a surge in religious interest since the pope arrived last Wednesday for a 100-hour visit as a self-described ``messenger of truth and hope.''

``I've received a lot of calls from people who want to talk to the priest. They say, `I'm a young person. You don't know me,' '' said the Rev. Marciano Garcia of Havana's El Carmelo Church. ``I've taken confession from people who hadn't confessed in 30 or 35 years.''

Clearly, a fragile sense of unity has emerged among some of the Cubans who turned out for the pope's four outdoor Masses, which drew a total audience of more than one million people and, in Havana on Sunday, triggered repeated chants of ``Freedom.''

When a reporter telephoned Migdalia de Gonzalez, a Catholic in the eastern city of Santiago de Cuba, and asked if she had gained strength from the other people she saw at the Mass -- as occurred in John Paul's first trip to his native Poland -- he heard a weak sob.

``Yes,'' she whispered, choking on tears. ``Yes.''

Other Cubans believe that many bedrock supporters of President Fidel Castro and the Communist Party may ultimately become confused by the government media's many reports on the Polish-born pontiff they never knew much about.

``The visit created some confusion among the revolution's young, those who were always told that religion was nothing and who now are told to go and listen to the pope,'' Colombian Ambassador Alberto Villamizar said.

`A clear message'

For Michael Ranneberger, director of the State Department's office of Cuban affairs, who was in the Cuban capital for the visit, the pope ``brought a clear message to the Cuban people on the need for fundamental freedom, social justice and change.''

For still others in Cuba, the papal visit was simply a bit of pageantry that brought a measure of entertainment to a country suffering a grinding economic crisis.

``It has brought joy back to the country. It's been like a big party. Whether the demands of the pope are met or not, that's a different matter,'' said Natalia Bolivar, an expert on Afro-Cuban religions.

Castro's government has hailed the visit as a grand success.

The newspaper Trabajadores, organ of the Communist-controlled National Workers Union, on Monday highlighted the pontiff's condemnation of the U.S. embargo of Cuba and his attack on the ``unbearable burdens'' that ``capitalist neoliberalism'' places on poorer countries.

Yet Communist hard-liners around Castro are said to be chafing at the critical jabs the pontiff delivered during his homilies, and at Castro's own decision to order supporters to attend the Masses.

Revolutionaries at Mass

Castro told revolutionaries he wanted them at the papal Masses as a respectful welcome to the pope. Dissidents complained it was Castro's brilliant way of making sure that any anti-government actions would be easily checked.

``But no one should mistake the fact that the success of the visit, in terms of people and impact, was fundamentally the work of Castro,'' Villamizar said. ``If Castro says don't go out on the street, they don't go out. The people turned out because he ordered it.''

Some Cuba experts saw the papal visit as evidence that Castro is losing his grip on power and looking to John Paul as a possible ally to burnish his own image as a humanist revolutionary.

``Castro may still have totalitarian ambitions but he no longer has totalitarian capacity,'' said Jorge Dominguez, a Cuba expert at Harvard University, who was in Havana for the visit.

Chants of `Freedom'

Twice during the pope's visit, emboldened Cubans erupted into unprecedented public displays of independence from government strictures. On Sunday, thousands repeatedly erupted into chants of ``Freedom!'' right under Castro's nose at the Havana Mass.

And on Friday, some 3,000 people gathered for a spontaneous rally outside the University of Havana as John Paul met inside with Cuban intellectuals. About 100 of them, kept by police from seeing the pope as he drove onto the campus, marched down a main Havana avenue to a hotel jammed with foreign journalists, to protest their treatment.

The brief blip of free expression clearly elated some Cubans. ``It was like a little bit of democracy, which we really lack,'' said a Havana shoe repairman who gave his name only as Orlando.

Back to everyday life

But others cautioned against expecting such freedoms to last.

``Yesterday was clearly out of the ordinary,'' said Garcia, the priest. ``Now we return to the routine and normality.''

Perhaps the most visible changes will come in the Cuban Catholic Church and its often-uneasy relationship with a government that was officially atheistic for 30 years.

The pope got his message across state-controlled media, and called for a larger church role in the country's education system, for more freedom and justice and for slow and gradual changes leading to larger reforms.

But experts said Castro is likely to cede in smaller ways -- permitting the church, for instance, to hold outdoor processions and continuing to allow some door-to-door proselytizing.

``If I was hired as an adviser to the Catholics,'' Villamizar said, ``I would tell them: `Don't go crazy, thinking that you give the orders around here. You have to manage this very carefully.' ''

Herald staff writers Christopher Marquis, Gerardo Reyes and Juan O. Tamayo contributed to this report.