Disappointment and frustration have been growing among Roman Catholics here since Pope John Paul II visited in January.
The government of President Fidel Castro, which won praise for receiving the pope, broadcasting his often-critical messages and releasing scores of prisoners at his behest, has shown little new flexibility in response to church requests for greater freedom.Efforts to ease the admittance of foreign priests and nuns have made no apparent progress. Nor have pleas that the government scale back controls on Catholic social service agencies that could deliver badly needed food and medical aid from abroad.
"It is obvious that there is still a lack of understanding by the authorities of the role that the church should have in society," said Orlando Marquez, a spokesman for the archbishop of Havana. "There are still limitations that are unnecessary."
By Latin American standards, the Catholic Church in Cuba remains almost politically insignificant. Though nearly half of Cuba's 11 million people have been baptized and the church claims roughly 70 percent of Cubans as Catholic, most analysts estimate the practicing faithful at a fraction of those numbers.
With the pope by his side in January, the archbishop of Santiago de Cuba, Pedro Meurice Estiu, squarely blamed "an ideological confrontation with Marxism-Leninism induced by the state" for the embattled state of the church.
But such defiance has scarcely echoed since John Paul's departure. A more typical tone was that struck by the Rev. Manuel Une as he led a visitor through the classrooms he was building in the basement of his Church of San Juan de Letran in Havana. "The process has to be a gradual one," he said. "Changes must be prepared for."