Aid to the Church in Need: Cuba: The loss of Archbishop Adolfo Rodriguez Herrera

Cuba: The loss of Archbishop Adolfo Rodriguez Herrera

Posted by Information Report on 27/6/2003, 5:58 pm
Message modified by board administrator 30/6/2003, 7:57 am

ARCHBISHOP Adolfo Rodriguez Herrera, who has died aged 79, steered the Catholic Church in Cuba through tempestuous times during most of Castro’s 44-year-old regime. JOHN PONTIFEX of Aid to the Church in Need interviewed him at length on a visit to Cuba in May 2003 just a month before his death.
“SO how have you kept the Church going in the face of ongoing oppression from Castro?”
The long and hard stare I received from the archbishop made me increasingly uneasy as I pondered his inscrutable response to my question – was a rebuke about to be uttered or a carefully considered answer?
“First, you should know that you must never mention the name of our communist leader – you never know who’s listening – and secondly, be very careful what you take down with that pen of yours.”
At 79 and reputedly in uncertain health, Monsignor Adolfo Rodriguez Herrera, Emeritus Archbishop of Camaguey, in south east Cuba, was proving every inch as formidable as so many had promised.
Indeed, while the rest of Cuba’s bishops had barely batted an eyelid at the mention of a particular cardinal or other such prelate, the name of Mgr Adolfo Rodriguez was almost bound to produce a courteous nod of the head and extravagant words of praise.
This after all was the veteran of three terms as President of Cuba’s bishops conference, one of only a few surviving priests from pre-Castro days, a contemporary of the Pope with whom he had spoken long into the night and above all a leader who had helped the Church to survive the terror of Castro’s earliest years.
Indeed, Monsignor Adolfo – the fatherly name by which he was known by everyone in Cuba – had himself hidden in the Apostolic Nuncio’s apartments as an anti-clergy witch-hunt swept the Cuban streets in 1961.
Two years later – by which time up to 70 percent of Cuba’s 800 priests had fled the country – Adolfo Rodriguez found himself appointed bishop in a country newly in the hands of communists, men justifiably paranoid at the threat posed by their large US neighbour.
“It is difficult to describe how difficult it was in those early days,” said the archbishop.
As he sat in the spacious bishop’s residence, he told how the building opposite had once been a Catholic school respected miles around. Seized by the communists just after the revolution, it had been abandoned. Now, like some slow crucifixion – to use his phrase – the monsignor had watched helpless as the school rotted away. The building’s fate, we heard, has been repeated across Cuba as a blanket ban was imposed on all church schools.
Powerless in the face of this and countless other acts of intolerance, Monsignor Adolfo described how his task had been to rebuild the Church with an undaunted resourcefulness but one which fell well short of confrontation of the regime – perceived or otherwise.
He explained how the Church had been sustained by the support of the international Catholic community, not least Aid to the Church in Need, the charity which supports persecuted and deprived Christians throughout the world.
He told how in the early days of his years as bishop he took the initiative from the then Cardinal Karol Wojtyla. The monsignor complained how the Church struggled on in spite of bans on religious demonstrations and processions, printing of books, media access and a host of other censures. The Pope responded: “‘I have a solution – the home. It is the last place the communists can get in. They can never take the Faith away from the family home.’ I have never forgotten that,” said the monsignor. Compulsory plaques of allegiance to Castro were quietly taken down in homes across Cuba. The private show of defiance proved a major morale booster. Years later, Monsignor Rodriguez met Wojtyla again – this time as Pope – and reminded him of his words. “I told the Pope: ‘You were obviously infallible, even then.’”
Since those dark days, the bishop said he had watched as glimmers of hope opened up as relations improved slightly between Church and State in Cuba. Indeed, a slow trickle of buildings has switched back into Church hands and indeed from his dining room, we watched as work continued on restoration to a fine, gothic church in central Camaguey, one of the few of its kind in the country.
Monsignor Rodriguez’ constant encouragement to his clergy and his diplomatic prowess did not escape the Vatican’s notice. The growth of the Church in Camaguey was recognised when it became an archdiocese during the Pope’s January 1998 visit to Cuba. It meant Adolfo Rodriguez became an archbishop.
In retirement, following the appointment of Monsignor Rodriguez’s vicar general, Juan Garcia, as Archbishop of Camaguey, in 2002, the Archbishop Emeritus was no less strident in his views and his public appearances.
With us, he made it clear how much he abhorred the long prison sentences of up to 28 years given to almost 80 Cuban dissidents, including many involved in the Varela Project, a human rights movement supported by many Catholics.
He said the sentences, given in early April, showed the importance of a system of values, which he had placed at the heart of his ministry.
“We must make this one point clear – that the human being is more important than money and government ideology.” “This government has got their priorities wrong.”
The struggle against oppression had obviously been hard for Monsignor Adolfo but in advanced old age he seemed as resolute as ever. As we left him, he said: “I would never want to be a priest or a bishop in another country.” After more than half a century serving the Church in his native province, he more than anyone else knew what that meant.
Photo: Archbishop Adolfo Rodriguez Herrera with John Pontifex (to the right of the archbishop) and other co-workers of Aid to the Church in Need

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