Seeking Hope

Father Ariel Suárez Jáuregui greets a parish­ioner at Our Lady of Char­ity Cath­olic Church in Cent­ral Havana. Suárez and the church have been a safety net dur­ing the human­it­arian crisis.

HAVANA – In the cool dark­ness of the church’s sac­risty, the Rev. Ariel Suárez Jáuregui pulled on his vest­ments – a white ankle-length robe and bright green stole – and entered the 19th-cen­tury sanc­tu­ary of Our Lady of Char­ity Cath­olic Church.

Hints of incense waf­ted among the soar­ing columns up to the Baroque-style domed ceil­ing. Eight small fans blew onto about 35 parish­ion­ers scattered among the wooden pews, a lux­ury in power-starved Havana. They swayed on their feet in the heat like Cuban palms as Father Suárez read from the Old Test­a­ment, sang hymns and urged the faith­ful to turn to the Holy Spirit for solu­tions to today’s “grave and urgent prob­lems.”

After the ser­vice, about 25 of them filed into a single line to speak with Suárez, a tra­di­tion he has main­tained after every Mass for the 27 years he’s been a priest. In hushed voices, they whispered their anxi­et­ies and asked for his help.

For dec­ades, the Roman Cath­olic Church in Cuba has served as a savior to many Cubans, oper­at­ing as a de facto social safety net. Once the bane of Cuba’s com­mun­ist, athe­ist gov­ern­ment, the church has stepped in as a power­ful advoc­ate for the Cuban people, a broker for those caught between war­ring polit­ical ideo­lo­gies.

“It’s the toughest – and prob­ably the sad­dest – of all the times I have lived through.” The Rev. Ariel Suárez Jáuregui

In May, the United States ear­marked $100 mil­lion in aid to Cuba. The Vat­ican agreed to act as an inter­me­di­ary and dis­trib­ute it through Caritas Cuba, a group asso­ci­ated with the Cath­olic Church. Cargo planes filled with pal­lets of rice, beans, cook­ing oil, sugar and tooth­paste star­ted fly­ing into Cuba this sum­mer.

Priests such as Suárez are on the front lines, secur­ing sup­plies and min­is­ter­ing dir­ectly to his par­ish’s flock.

On a recent Tues­day after Mass, one woman asked him to pray for her preg­nant daugh­ter, who had fallen and had to be rushed to a hos­pital. Another who had traveled from Matan­zas to Havana found her­self alone in Cuba and asked him to find her a place to live. One man des­per­ately needed medi­cine for his dia­betes.

To some, Suárez offered a quick bless­ing, tra­cing a cross in the air in front of the parish­ioner. To oth­ers, he gif­ted a pack of dis­pos­able diapers or pren­atal vit­am­ins. Always, he told them to cling to their faith. God would see them through.

Over the years, Suárez, 53, has led con­greg­a­tions through peri­ods of pro­longed black­outs, eco­nomic crises, mass migra­tions and viol­ent protests in Cuba.

Today, by far, is the worst he’s seen his coun­try, he said.

“It’s the toughest – and prob­ably the sad­dest – of all the times I have lived through,” Suárez said from his church office in an inter­view with USA TODAY.

“We are wit­ness­ing a grow­ing deteri­or­a­tion in recent months across every aspect of national life.”

When the United States imposed an oil embargo on Jan. 29 and began step­ping up sanc­tions against Cuba, it exposed dec­ades of mis­man­age­ment of Cuba’s power grid, lead­ing to black­outs that last for days and food and water short­ages.

To fill the gaps, priests, bish­ops, nuns and volun­teers across the island have ramped up their aid: start­ing soup kit­chens, fer­ry­ing clean water, open­ing laun­dro­mats and deliv­er­ing food to the home­less.

But Caritas and the Cuban author­it­ies don’t have the resources to get all the sup­plies where they need to go, said Miami Arch­bishop Thomas Wenski, who is help­ing to over­see the trans­port. Lack of ware­houses to store sup­plies and fuel to trans­port them cripples aid dis­tri­bu­tion, he said.

“There are mir­acles hap­pen­ing all the time,” he said. “But it’s a drop in the bucket.”

‘A cer­tain hope and joy’

Vis­it­ors light candles and pray at the shrine to La Caridad del Cobre, Cuba’s pat­ron saint, in Our Lady of Char­ity Cath­olic Church in Cent­ral Havana.

Suárez was born in Havana and ordained in 1999, and became the par­ish priest at Our Lady of Char­ity in Feb­ru­ary 2015, a crit­ical time for Cuba.

Later that year, Pope Fran­cis vis­ited the island, improv­ing ties between the Church and Cuban offi­cials. And in March 2016, Pres­id­ent Barack Obama announced a rap­proche­ment between Wash­ing­ton and Havana that encour­aged private enter­prise on the island and benefited scores of Cubans eco­nom­ic­ally.

“The people and church lived with a cer­tain hope and joy,” Suárez remembered.

The situ­ation star­ted to notice­ably deteri­or­ate after the coronavirus pan­demic as tour­ism dried up and the eco­nomy cratered, he said. Con­di­tions worsened each year and spiraled after the United States imposed the oil embargo in Janu­ary.

Earlier this year, using funds raised in part by parish­ion­ers’ fam­il­ies in the United States, his church launched soup kit­chens twice a week, opened a free par­ish laun­dro­mat for fam­il­ies without elec­tri­city and star­ted cook­ing meals for Havana’s bur­geon­ing home­less pop­u­la­tion, Suárez said.

“There are vast voids here,” he said. “And unfor­tu­nately, as far as I can see, there doesn’t seem to be much of a glim­mer of hope.”

Suárez’s day starts at 6 a.m. with his morn­ing prayer (“O God, come to my assist­ance. Lord, make haste to help me …”), fol­lowed by morn­ing cof­fee and cook­ies with his staff. By 8 a.m., he’s meet­ing with con­greg­ants or vis­it­ing the sick in their homes.

Suárez, who also serves as sec­ret­ary of the Con­fer­ence of Cath­olic Bish­ops of Cuba, meets with church offi­cials on some days. On oth­ers, he secures a water truck to replen­ish the par­ish’s sup­ply or finds fresh food for the kit­chen staff to cook.

Drug use ‘des­troy­ing young people’

Walk­ing the city’s streets offers Suárez a glimpse into the hard­ships of life in Havana.

Some fam­il­ies he vis­its go weeks without run­ning water. Oth­ers are in dire need of medi­cine.

Most alarm­ing is the grow­ing num­ber of young people slumped on park benches, high on el químico, a syn­thetic, can­nabis-based drug com­monly laced with anti­e­pileptic med­ic­a­tion, form­al­de­hyde or animal-grade anes­thesia.

“It’s des­troy­ing so many young people,” he said.

“They’re caught in a cycle of escap­ism, rad­ical dis­or­i­ent­a­tion, and a lack of pur­pose in life.”

As black­outs grew more fre­quent last year, Suárez raised funds to install a 16panel solar power sys­tem for the church – mak­ing it one of the few build­ings with con­stant power in this cent­ral Havana neigh­bor­hood.

He real­izes his par­ish is one of the luck­ier ones. Other churches rarely have power. Their work­ers cook meals over fire­wood and return each night to dark, swel­ter­ing homes.

Besides 22-hour black­outs and lack of run­ning water, what’s really hurt the island is the recent mass exodus, Suárez said.

Many of the par­ish’s younger con­greg­ants have fled Cuba, includ­ing youth min­istry lead­ers and other volun­teers, he said.

An estim­ated 1.8 mil­lion Cubans have fled the island in the past five years. The major­ity, about 75%, are between the ages of 15 and 49, accord­ing to a 2025 ana­lysis by the Uni­versity of Nav­arra in Pamplona, Spain.

They left behind a grow­ing pop­u­la­tion of aging fam­ily mem­bers who can’t sur­vive on mea­ger gov­ern­ment pen­sions.

Every Wed­nes­day and Fri­day, his par­ish din­ing hall fills with more than 200 older res­id­ents, many get­ting their first full meal of the week, Suárez said. On Thursdays and every other Sat­urday, he and other church offi­cials deliver meals to more than 100 people liv­ing in parks and squares around the Vedado and Old Havana neigh­bor­hoods.

“It just keeps grow­ing,” Suárez said of the num­ber of people his church feeds.

In between help­ing parish­ion­ers sur­vive a worsen­ing crisis, Suárez also organ­izes one of the most import­ant events of the Cuban Cath­olic cal­en­dar: the annual half-mile pro­ces­sion of La Caridad del Cobre, Cuba’s pat­ron saint.

Throngs of adher­ents clog the street as a statuette of the Vir­gin Mary as La Caridad is wheeled around the neigh­bor­hood. A march­ing band blares music and pray­ers are recited through a bull­horn as res­id­ents scat­ter col­or­ful con­fetti over the pro­ces­sion from bal­conies.

It’s one of the most anti­cip­ated events of the year for Cuban Cath­ol­ics, some­times draw­ing more than 20,000 faith­ful into the streets out­side the church.

But it wasn’t always allowed.

Castro clashes with Cath­ol­ics

Before Fidel Castro’s 1959 revolu­tion, about three-fourths of Cubans con­sidered them­selves Roman Cath­olic. Castro, a product of a Cath­olic edu­ca­tion him­self, expelled hun­dreds of priests sus­pec­ted to be anti-revolu­tion­ar­ies and denounced the church’s role in soci­ety.

Churches closed. Cath­olic col­leges were nation­al­ized. Attend­ance plummeted as Cath­ol­ics avoided Mass and fled Cuba.

Castro’s ire against the church erup­ted in Septem­ber 1961 – out­side Our Lady of Char­ity Church. The priest at the time, Monsignor Eduardo Boza Mas­vida, led an unau­thor­ized pro­ces­sion of La Caridad del Cobre through the streets. Police fired into the crowd and killed a young man, accord­ing to an account by Time magazine.

Days later, Mas­vida and more than 130 other Cuban priests were expelled from the island on Castro’s orders.

La Caridad’s street pro­ces­sion was can­celed for nearly four dec­ades – until Pope John Paul II’s visit to Cuba in 1998 helped rekindle rela­tions between Havana and the Vat­ican. It’s been a yearly occur­rence ever since.

On Sept. 8, more than 1,000 people crowded the streets near Our Lady of Char­ity Church to fol­low the statuette on her 11-block loop around the neigh­bor­hood.

Some wore yel­low, the saint’s his­toric color; oth­ers hois­ted their own statuettes of the Vir­gin they affec­tion­ately call Cachita. White-robed clergy walked among the crowds, swinging incense and filling the street with fra­grant clouds.

“It reminds us that God walks with us, that we are not alone,” Suárez said, “that God and the Vir­gin Mary walk among men.”

The church as dip­lo­mat

The church for years has inter­ceded in nego­ti­ations between Cuba and the United States.

The clergy helped broker a deal between Havana and Wash­ing­ton in 2015 that restored rela­tions after more than five dec­ades of hos­til­ity and laid the ground­work for Obama’s his­toric visit to the island in March 2016.

Pres­id­ent Don­ald Trump later reversed many of those policies. And in May, Sec­ret­ary of State Marco Rubio met with Pope Leo XIV at the Vat­ican to dis­cuss the church dis­trib­ut­ing the $100 mil­lion in U.S. aid.

The church has also voiced its con­cern when rela­tions between the two coun­tries frac­ture.

Two days after the White House announced the oil embargo, the Con­fer­ence of Cath­olic Bish­ops of Cuba released a tersely-worded state­ment, warn­ing of the harm it could inflict on Cubans.

“The risk of social chaos and viol­ence among the chil­dren of the same people is real,” the state­ment said. “Cuba needs changes – changes that are becom­ing increas­ingly urgent – but it cer­tainly does not need any more anguish or pain.”

Suárez called the state­ment proph­etic – and a reminder that gov­ern­ment decisions often inflict the most harm on the most vul­ner­able.

“Why don’t we set aside par­tisan interests to truly seek the com­mon good of people, the good of the nation, the good of a people who are suf­fer­ing?” he said.

Bar­bara Díaz, 68, of Havana, left the church after join­ing local com­mun­ist party com­mit­tees but returned in the 1990s. People are “look­ing for hope,” she said.

‘Look­ing for hope’On a recent Tues­day, Suárez wrapped up morn­ing Mass by listen­ing dir­ectly to the faith­ful who had come to church.

Among them was Bar­bara Díaz, 68, of Havana. She atten­ded Mass reg­u­larly here as a child with her grand­mother but stopped com­ing after becom­ing involved with local com­mun­ist party com­mit­tees.

She returned in the 1990s. Lately, more and more of her rel­at­ives are attend­ing church, she said. “A lot of people who stopped com­ing to the church are com­ing back,” Díaz said. “They’re look­ing for hope that this situ­ation will change.”

Ileana Ser­rano, 57, said she had traveled from Matan­zas to Havana, look­ing for a place to stay after her fam­ily left. Ser­rano said she didn’t have any other fin­an­cial options, so she turned to the church.

“I’m all alone. I never had elec­tri­city. I can’t live like that,” Ser­rano said. “I’m a believer . … If they let me live in the church, I would.”

Suárez listened to all the con­greg­ants’ needs, help­ing where he could, until every one filed out and the church emp­tied.

He returned to the dress­ing area, removed his vest­ments and sat for a minute on a couch in his office. Statues of the Vir­gin Mary and cru­ci­fied Jesus looked down on him from atop a book­case next to five wall-moun­ted mon­it­ors blink­ing with the kilo­watts cap­tured by the church’s solar pan­els.

It’s not always easy listen­ing to the hard­ships of his par­ish and com­ing up with solu­tions, Suárez said. Often, there are none.

“It’s over­whelm­ing,” he said. “But I tell myself, ‘Go – because you became a priest to serve people, not lock your­self away in a glass bubble.’”

It was time for a quick lunch. Then Suárez needed to visit sick parish­ion­ers and ensure his volun­teers had enough food and clean water. The clock was tick­ing. In a few hours, Havana would be cloaked in dark­ness.

‘God walks with us, we are not alone’

He stood and went back to work.

PressReader.com | ‘God walks with us, we are not alone’