Cuban Catholics say help needed to evangelize country

Sep 19, 2004 / 22:00 pm

During a visit to the international headquarters of Aid to the Church in Need, a collaborator with the Diocese of Guantanamo-Baracoa, Cuba, said the Church in Cuba needs help in order to “move ahead with evangelization” and that although the Church is “tolerated” by the government, she is facing a very difficult situation.

“In Cuba, the Catholic Church is tolerated, but it is barely possible to move ahead with evangelization,” said Elme Castillo, collaborator of Bishop Carlos Jesus Patricio Baladron-Valdes of Guantanamo-Baracoa.   

According to Castillo, in Cuba the media “is controlled by the government and intensely promotes the official atheistic ideology of communism.”

Likewise, he stated that his diocese, like all others in Cuba, lacks almost any financial resources and depends on foreign help.

“The situation in the country, both for the people and for the Church, could not be worse than it is today,” he said, warning that after Castro “many people will be confused and there will be a power struggle, but we must trust in God and not in the structures of man.”

In 2003, Aid to the Church in Need sent over one million dollars to the Church in Cuba.