208 Chapter 9
undesirable and untrustworthy for incorporation into the revolution-
ary armed forces:
“In 1966 I was personally taken in the middle of the night to a labor
camp in Camaguey. There were about 50,000 people there, Catholics
(priests and laity), homosexuals, thieves, and Jehovah’s Witnesses, who
were treated worst of all. These experiences, one never forgets.”^3By 1968, all of Cuba’s remaining bishops were born in Cuba. But
its ranks were still depleted and internal conflicts between conserva-
tives and reform-minded church leaders persisted. Cuban clergy
found no resonance in the growing strength of Liberation Theology
in Latin America. Seen through the lens of their own experiences with
repression, they were unable to envision any symbiosis between Chris-
tianity and Marxism. Moreover, the passive laity of the church did not
feel comfortable openly professing their faith, either socially or in civil
activities. Heading into the 1980s, the general aura of the Catholic
Church in Cuba was that of a marginalized, quiescent institution, a
relic of a pre-revolutionary society.
However, international events and a change in leadership precipi-
tated a renovation. Drawing inspiration from the meeting of the Latin
American Episcopal Conference (CELAM) in Puebla in 1979, the
Cuban Catholic Church embarked on a 5-year period of reflection
resulting in the 1986 Encuentro Nacional Eclesial Cubano (ENEC confer-
ence), an event designed to be the start of a new direction for the
church in Cuba now seeking to proceed with evangelization within a
revolutionary context. The younger church leaders that organized the
conference (including Jaime Ortega, made Archbishop of Havana in
1981 at the age of 39) initially established closer ties with the Cuban
government and offered a more conciliatory message than the Cuban
Catholic Church had ever done during the revolutionary years.
During the conference, church leaders admitted their own errors
and shortcomings of the past and expressed their determination to
update their approach to evangelization and for the church to become
- Mons. Alfredo Petit Vergel, interview by author, Havana, Cuba, 2006.