In this journalism business where I have worked for over twenty-five years, I have a couple of friends with whom I usually share, on the telephone, any interesting news that might be happening in Cuba. As you can imagine, ever since Pope Francis arrived in Havana last Saturday September 19th, and during his stay in the Cuban capital, as well as in the cities of Holguín and Santiago, my colleagues and I have had an intense back-and-forth exchange of phone calls to comment on different topics related to the Holy Father’s visit to our country.
I must confess that my religious vocation, and especially my Catholic one, is nil, since my formation, as that of the great majority of people born in Cuba at the beginning of the sixties in the last century, was directed by the canons of Marxist-Leninism and atheism, and so, correspondingly, I do not believe in any supreme power (whether human or extrahuman). Nevertheless, I understand the urgency that my fellow countrymen have felt since the Special Period to believe in something, starting with the crisis of faith that surged in Cuba when facing the fall of the so-called real socialism. Such a need to have hope finds its logical parallel in the growth of religious beliefs that we have witnessed in the country from 1990 on. Given my non-religious vocation, I was surprised when my esteemed editor at Cuba Counterpoints asked me to write a piece about the Pope’s visit to Cuba. I must say that my first thought was to flatly refuse, but on second thought I reconsidered, and here are the personal reflections that have arisen by the arrival of a third Pope in Cuba in scarcely seventeen years.
From the start, I want to disclose my sympathies for the former Buenos Aires archbishop. Not only because he is Latin American (it was time we had a Pontiff from this region), but because of the role that he has played with respect to the reestablishment of diplomatic relations between Cuba and the US. When I listen to him speak, I am grabbed by his Argentine accent, which reminds me so much of the way his compatriot Oscar Martínez speaks, an actor so popular in Cuba due to serials like Nueve lunas (Nine Moons) or films like Relatos salvajes (Wild Tales). In the same vein, I love Francisco´s manner and have the impression that he is never hurried, that he always has time to offer a greeting, a kiss or a caress to one of his faithful, especially the most vulnerable and helpless.
I must confess that I have not been interested at all in the political readings that many in the media, anxious to find such references, have done of certain phrases by the Catholic Church Leader. In my opinion, he has tried to avoid open political confrontation on his Cuban trip, understating the political figure –the statesman- that he has become much to his regret, and embracing, primarily, his role as a pastor. I do share many of his ideas as such, as for example that serving means to take care of human fragility. In that regard, during the mass celebrated at the Plaza de la Revolución (Revolution Square), he said: “He who wants to be great, let him serve others, not use others”. Of course, there are some of his ideas that I, with utmost sincerity, do not share, like those implying we must forfeit any of the freedoms that humankind has obtained with blood, sweat, and tears.
One of the things that has captured my attention the most during the Pontiff’s stay in Cuba is the gift that Francisco gave Fidel, a book with CDs and readings, reflections, and sermons by the Jesuit priest Armando Llorente, who was a tutor for the leader of the Cuban Revolution when he attended the Belén School in Havana. And I say that this has caught my attention because only a couple of years after January 1, 1959, that is, in 1961, when the Revolutionary government entered into conflict with the Catholic Church, that priest had to leave Cuba and move to Miami, where he died in 2010. It is understandable, then, that such a gift has an added symbolic value, as a kind of subtle message about the necessity of reconciliation among all Cubans.
Generally, even more than what the Pope said in each of his masses in Havana, Holguín and Santiago, what impacted me the most were his improvised sermons, as for example, the one during a prayer service with priests, seminarians, and members of religious orders at the Havana Cathedral, in reply to the moving testimonial by the young Sister Yailenis Ponce, missionary of the Daughters of Charity, who spoke about her work in a home for the disabled and the mentally ill, property of the Cuban Ministry of Public Health.
Or the marvelous sermon that he improvised for the young people congregated outside the Félix Varela Cultural Center, in response to a young man by the name of Leonardo Fernández, who asked him to help the island’s youth to accept those who think differently. To that, Francisco exhorted young people to have “open hearts and open minds” and talk with those who think differently, searching for what they have in common. This is a message not only to the young, but that all Cubans, of any ideological bent, need to take in, whether living in Cuba or in another country, with the awareness that we still have a long learning curve before harmonizing our reality with the words reconciliation, dialogue, and discrepancy. Maybe it was in anticipation of that day, when tolerance and respect for others reign among those born on this land, that around 300 Cuban American pilgrims came to Cuba for the Pope’s visit. For most of them, it was their first return, and they were accompanied by a group of North American priests, among them Miami’s archbishop Thoma Wenski.
Finally, I do not want to downplay the role played by music during the Pope Francis’s events. For instance, after the Holy Father’s prayer to Our Lady of the Caridad del Cobre (Cuba’s patron saint), at the sanctuary where her venerated image is treasured, a girls’ choir with two soloists dedicated a musical offering to the Pontiff, which they had prepared for the special occasion: “I have come to offer my heart,” a song by the Argentine rock star Fito Páez, immortalized in the incredible version of singer Mercedes Sosa. In the context of Francisco’s visit to El Cobre, where he prayed to Our Lady of Charity for the reconciliation of all her children, inside and outside the island, Páez’s opening words, “¿Quién dijo que todo está perdido?” (Who said that everything is lost?) acquires a novel meaning. Thus in my opinion, the girls’ choir from Santiago de Cuba, in its innocence, has resignified the well known, notable song by Fito Páez, for the pleasure of Francisco, as well as of Catholic acolytes inside and outside Cuba, as, no doubt, of so many who, like me, are neither Catholic nor religious.
— Joaquin Borges-Triana
(translation by Eliana Rivero)
Joaquín Borges-Triana is a Cuban music journalist. He has a PhD in Cultural Studies by the Superior Art Institute, in Havana, and is author of the book “La luz, bróder, la luz. Canción cubana contemporánea,” published in Spain. He has lectured extensively in many universities around the world, and was a visiting professor at the University of Georgia in 2013.