Cuban cardinal says religious repression diminishing slowly

Published: 2006-07-03

LOS ANGELES (CNS) -- It's been a slow process, but "religious repression has been diminishing little by little" in Cuba, said Cardinal Jaime Ortega Alamino of Havana, Cuba. Starting in the 1980s "there was an evolution on the part of the government" increasing church-state communication and "the tension began to diminish," the cardinal said in an interview with The Tidings, newspaper of the Los Angeles Archdiocese, which appeared June 30. The cardinal was in Los Angeles in June to attend the spring meeting of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and to visit with Cuban-Americans in the area. The limits placed by the communist government on the church now do not involve being able to worship, he said. They involve not being able to have Catholic schools or teach religion in public schools, he said. There is also limited access to the state-controlled media, the cardinal said. "Slowly we are achieving more," he said. "But we don't have customary access to communications media." The cardinal praised the spread of "missionary houses of prayer," private homes where Catholics come together for prayer and religious instruction. "There comes a moment when these homes form a Christian community. They function like a parish," he said.

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