Will Raul Castro return to religion?
That Castro, a longtime communist and atheist, would return to the Catholic Church of his youth might seem beyond improbable.
After all, following the revolution that he and his older brother Fidel Castro led to victory in 1959, Cuba was an officially atheist state for three decades.
Priests from other countries working in Cuba were deported. Many Cuban priests were sent to work camps. Catholics on the Caribbean island learned to keep their faith a secret if they wanted to advance in their education or careers.
Only with the fall of the Soviet Union did many of prohibitions on religion lift. Both Raul and Fidel Castro welcomed Pope John Paul II to the island in 1998 and later Pope Benedict XVI, but there was no indication that either Castro felt any stirring of the faith.
At least until Pope Francis.
“If the Pope continues talking like this, I may return to the church and start praying again,” Raul Castro said after meeting with Francis for more than an hour at the Vatican in July.
“I am not joking,” the Cuban leader said as reporters chuckled at what they thought was his trademark dry humor.
Cuban Cardinal Jaime Ortega y Alamino told CNN in an exclusive interview that he had not observed any signs Castro will rejoin the church — at least not yet.
“It could mean the desire by Castro to approach the religion of his early youth, his Jesuit studies. But the word ‘return’ means a distancing,” Ortega said. “It means a religious faith that existed in its moment but hasn’t been observed. It’s very personal.”
But there are hints that Castro’s atheism could be softening. The cardinal revealed to CNN that Castro keeps a statue of Our Lady of Charity, Cuba’s beloved version of the Virgin Mary, in his office.
The statue had been meant as a gift for Benedict during this 2012 visit, but then Castro reconsidered.
“Many people who had visited his office told him that it was really nice, and that he should leave it there and have another one made for the Pope, and that’s what happened,” Ortega said. “He gave another one to the Pope when he came, and that one stayed in his office.”
Francis biographer Austen Ivereigh said Castro and the Pope have quickly established a bond that appears to transcend their considerable differences.
“There is a chemistry, it’s just obvious,” Ivereigh said. “They are of a same age and similar generation. Francis as a young man, a young Jesuit, was deeply impacted by the Cuban revolution — his whole generation was. And he was deeply disappointed when the revolution went communist. I wonder if Francis is reminding Raul about what the revolution was before the revolution went Marxist.”
The two will have time to build on this unlikely friendship as Castro has said he will do something unprecedented for a Cuban leader — attend all three of the Pope’s Masses when he visits Cuba from Saturday to Tuesday.
