History of the Catholic Church in Cuba

Christopher Columbus, on his first Spanish-sponsored voyage to the Americas in 1492, sailed south from what is now the Bahamas to explore the northeast coast of Cuba and the northern coast of Hispaniola. Columbus, who was searching for a route to India, believed the island to be a peninsula of the Asian mainland.[1][2] The first sighting of a Spanish ship approaching the island was on 28 October 1492, probably at Bariay, Holguín Province, on the eastern point of the island.[3]

During a second voyage in 1494, Columbus passed along the south coast of the island, landing at various inlets including what was to become Guantánamo Bay. With the Papal Bull of 1493, Pope Alexander VI commanded Spain to conquer, colonize and convert the pagans of the New World to Catholicism.[4]

Fidel Castro

After the 1959 revolution, Cuba officially embraced atheism. Practicing Catholics and other believers were viewed with suspicion and discriminated. Fidel Castro succeeded in reducing the Church's ability to work by deporting the archbishop and 150 Spanish priests, discriminating against Catholics in public life and education and refusing to accept them as members of the Communist Party.[5] The subsequent flight of 300,000 people from the island also helped to diminish the Church there.[5]

In 1992, Cuba declared itself a secular state and permitted Catholics and others to join the Communist Party. However, religious schools have remained closed since the early 1960s.

See also

References
  1. Carla Rahn Phillips (1993). The Worlds of Christopher Columbus (reprint, illustrated ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 205. ISBN 978-0-521-44652-5.
  2. Thomas Suarez (1999). Early Mapping of Southeast Asia. Tuttle Publishing. p. 109. ISBN 978-962-593-470-9.
  3. Gott, Richard (2004). Cuba: A new history. Yale University Press. Chapter 5.
  4. Bakewell, Peter. A History of Latin America. Blackwell Publishers. pp. 129–130.
  5. Chadwick, A History of Christianity (1995), p. 266
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