Catholic Leaders See the Start of New Cuban Era

For five cathartic days, Pope John Paul II took over the plazas and symbols of Fidel Castro’s revolution and electrified crowds with a Christian manifesto for Cuba’s transition to a freer society. In a land where, for 39 years, everything has come down to the presence of a single leader and his Communist Party, was this the start of a new era?

The instant, euphoric response from Roman Catholic leaders and some Cubans who poured into the plazas is yes: John Paul’s five-day pilgrimage was a watershed--one that could well embolden people here to assert themselves in ways Castro’s government could find hard to manage.

The same voices caution, however, that John Paul won no public pledge from Castro to expand religious and civic freedoms and that, without such a commitment, the Clinton administration is in no mood to ease a U.S. trade embargo that the pope condemned here for “indiscriminately” punishing the poorest of this nation’s 11 million people.

In that narrow sense, John Paul left Havana on Sunday no closer to the goal he announced upon arrival: “May Cuba open itself up to the world, and may the world open itself up to Cuba.”

But by every other measure, his pilgrimage has nudged this Caribbean island and its 71-year-old leader nearer to uncharted waters.

Consider all that has happened in Cuba since Wednesday:

* Four outdoor papal Masses in four cities drew progressively bigger and more responsive crowds--the largest for any religious event since Castro in 1962 imposed an official atheism that ended 30 years later. “You could see their spontaneous joy--in some cases because this was a novelty but, more, I think, because of their enormous faith,” said Cardinal Augusto Vargas Arzamora, archbishop of Lima, Peru.

* For the first time, a nationwide television audience heard someone other than the Cuban leader spell out a vision for Cuba--one that echoed his rejection of “unchecked materialism” and “blind market forces” but advocated free speech and assembly, the release of prisoners of conscience and a strong role for the church in an independent civil society.

* Felix Varela and Jose Marti, revered by the regime as independence heroes, were invoked by the pope, who reminded Cubans of Varela’s vocation as a priest and quoted Marti effusively to support his own views. Havana’s Plaza of the Revolution, symbolic heart of the regime, was packed with half a million Cubans drawn to the pope, a smattering even chanting “Freedom! Freedom!” And each day, the white-robed guest shared the space reserved for Castro on the front page of Granma, the official organ of Cuba’s Communist Party.

* In a church on Havana’s edge, a children’s choir standing before the pope sang out: “We pray to you Lord, pardon the one who has no respect for the right to live with dignity.”

Through it all, Castro appeared a respectful and patient host, after preparing his nation for a visit and a personal meeting between a pope and a president who should be viewed, he said, as allies--”two angels in the service of the poor.”

Putting his own spin on the visit at the pope’s departure ceremony Sunday night, Castro reminded his nation and the world that he had allowed every public word and image of the papal visit to be seen in every part of his island and every corner of the world--stressing that Cuba is firm in its ideals and has nothing to fear.

“Never before, perhaps, could so many opinions and news about so tiny a nation be heard in such a brief time for so many people on our planet,” he said.

After his farewell to the pope in a ceremony that marked the first time Cubans had heard Castro speak since the day of the pope’s arrival, viewers were treated to an extraordinary image: Castro and his inner circle on the airport runway discussing, debating and joking with a ring of bishops and cardinals that encircled him. Then, politicians and priests together waved to the papal plane as it soared away.

In many ways, the visit did give Castro a public relations windfall outside Cuba. The pope’s blast at the 35-year-old U.S. embargo--reinforced by Castro’s condemnation at the same ceremony--was designed to put his enemies in Washington on the defensive, and the television images portrayed him as an eager host and tolerant leader. Even the U.S. media were filled with mostly positive images of Castro and his nation--although the White House sex scandal did cut deeply into Cuba’s air time.

But the week’s biggest surprise featured a Cuban prelate whose name was known to only a few outside the island, and his performance underscored the risk Castro had run by inviting the anti-Communist pope.

Live on Cuban state TV, and standing just a few feet from the pope and his protective robes at a Mass in his city, Santiago Archbishop Pedro Meurice Estiu issued an unexpected critique of his government and its one-party system, using stronger words than the pope’s to condemn the way many Cubans “have confused fatherland with party . . . a culture with an ideology.”

His remarks stunned Cuban authorities and set people talking throughout the island about an emboldened new Cuban church.

“What he did has freed a lot of people to say what they feel,” said Msgr. William Murphy, the auxiliary bishop of Boston, echoing the effusive mood among visiting American cardinals and bishops who were invited to a U.S. diplomatic reception here Saturday.

Other analysts were more cautious, saying it has yet to be seen whether the archbishop’s challenge will be viewed as an isolated incident.

“There has to be serious debate going on in the upper reaches of the party,” said Thomas Quigley, a Cuba-watching advisor for the National Conference of Catholic Bishops in Washington. “The people most dependent on this system have to be concerned about Fidel’s seeming about-face” and his assurances that fallout from the visit “could be contained more easily than it has been.”

Now that the pope is gone and the crowds dispersed, it is Castro’s turn to speak.

Leaders of the slowly resurgent Cuban church, which only recently has begun to take hold at the nation’s grass roots, are counting on a lasting end to bans on outdoor religious ceremonies. They and leaders of other faiths are hoping to reopen their religious schools, to maintain Christmas as an official holiday for more than just last year, to obtain more visas for foreign missionaries, to have continued access to the state-run media and to distribute their own publications nationwide.

What does seem likely, Vatican officials and analysts say, is that any gains for the church will come gradually, and only through sustained, diplomatic pressure from the bishops on a still-powerful regime--the type of finesse it showed in reversing an initial government refusal to televise nationwide all four of John Paul’s Masses.

“Fidel has ways to keep things moving slowly, but I don’t think we’ll see a return to the open hostility of the past,” said Shawn T. Malone, a Cuba specialist for the Georgetown University Caribbean Project. “I don’t think this process can be stopped at this point without high cost.”

Washington is skeptical. “I never use the word ‘irreversible’ in the Cuban context,” William Ranneberger, the U.S. State Department’s point man for Cuba, cautioned as the papal trip neared its end.

U.S. policy, he added, remains unchanged: that the trade sanctions will be lifted only after the Cuban government shows “systematic and fundamental change.”

All previous attempts to end the embargo have met decisive opposition from politically influential Cuban Catholic exiles in Miami, who want to force Castro’s overthrow.

For those who made the trip across the Florida Straits that separate 11 million Cubans from a million more in exile, the scene at Sunday’s homily convinced them that the pope, in fact, had served as a catalyst for positive change.

“This pope has injected himself into the political scene, and Fidel has allowed him to come for a reason,” John de Leon, 35, a lawyer born to Cuban exiles in Miami, said after Sunday’s Mass. “That reason is the church is morally compatible with the Cuban state. It’s a subtle process, but it has begun, and it is headed in the right direction.”

Times staff writer Stanley Meisler in Washington contributed to this story.