A new church is being built in Cuba for the first time in 43 years

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Orthodox Cuba

A new church is being built in Cuba for the first time in 43 years – and it’s not Roman Catholic

The temple of Saints Constantine and Helen in Havana, Cuba, hasn’t heard a sermon in years. Instead, the Greek Orthodox Church has been the home of a children’s theatre company. When Archbishop Athenagoras was elected to head the newly established Holy Metropolitanate of Panama and Central America in 1996, the Greek Orthodox liturgies were taking place at borrowed premises.

Pope John Paul II’s visit to the Caribbean island in 1998 – the year when Christmas was officially reinstated in Cuba – proved a major opportunity to discuss religious matters. It was then that Archbishop Athenagoras together with the Greek Ambassador to Cuba, Yorgos Kostoulas, and the American Archdiocese began to put pressure at diplomatic and political levels for the return of Sts Constantine and Helen.

Although to date the church remains a theatre, something much more remarkable has happened. The Castro government has instead agreed on the construction of a new Greek Orthodox church, the first religious structure to be built in all of Cuba in 43 years. On Sunday 20 January, in the presence of Cuban government representatives and foreign diplomats, the Archbishop and Kostoulas placed the foundation stone of what is to be Saint Nikolaos (or Nicholas), the new Greek Orthodox church.

“In recent years many churches were returned to their respective congregations,” explained Archbishop Athenagoras speaking to GreeceNow from Panama. “But this is the first time that the government has allowed the construction of a new church.” And indeed, with the Cuban government’s own initiative and in the most exquisite of locations – the port side in Old (or Colonial) Havana, a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1982.

When the official opening takes place in about 10 months time both Ecumenical Patriarchate Bartholomew and Fidel Castro will be present in the St Francesco de Assisi square, the picturesque part of the city that St Nikolaos will call home.

As to the better part of the credit for the church’s construction this must be given to the Greek Ambassador. “He is such a fine diplomat with a lot of love for the Church,” says the Archbishop. “From the moment he arrived in Cuba he made it his main priority on a diplomatic and political level to gain the return of the church of Sts Constantine and Helen. He has done what no one else has done in 43 years.”

Respect and creeds The generous gesture towards the Greek Orthodox church may seem a little incongruous, since, if anything, Cuba would normally be associated with the Roman Catholic church; the clear majority of Cubans are officially Catholics and only few thousand residents belong to the greater Orthodox church; as for Greek Orthodox, well, there’s only about 50 Greeks in all of Cuba!

Yet the Archbishop explains that, “from my understanding, this has less to do with numbers than with the respect towards the Greek Orthodox Church. Firstly, we are not involved in the politics of the West and secondly, Cubans are very interested in our Church, we’ve had a number of conversions too. There is a real sense of respect at the local level. In the future we hope that more churches will be built in other locations around Cuba, but this is really a trend affecting all of Central America.”

The US State Department’s 2000 Annual Report on International Religious Freedom however, found that “while some observers have noted a greater acceptance of religion in Cuba in recent years, the Government continued to engage in active efforts to monitor and control religious institutions, including the surveillance, infiltration, and harassment of clergy and church members”.

Still for Father Timotheos – a Cuban who converted to the Greek Orthodox Church and works at the Archdiocese headquarters in Mexico – this is a significant event not just for the Greek Orthodox Church but for all churches in Cuba. “An event like this is an example of the religious freedom existing in Cuba. Many may not believe that this can be the case in a Communist country, but it truly is. And the years since the arrival of Archbishop Athenagoras have been very positive for the Greek Orthodox Church.”

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