12A
Monday, August 18, 1997
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Cuban church awaits papal visit
The Associated Press
HAVANA — Cuba's Roman Catholic Church, repressed for years under the island's Marxist regime, hopes a visit by Pope John Paul II will help it regain the freedom it needs to exercise its ministry.
Cuban bish-
Cuban bishops are encouraged by a slow but increasingly visible revival of Catholicism. To push the revival further, however, the church will need things the government may not be willing to give access to news media and its own system of education, among others.
John Paul II
The Cuban government needs the papal visit in January to project a more tolerant image abroad. The church needs it as a lever to widen its sphere of influence in Cuban society.
Religious officials, while empha
sizing the pastoral aspect of the visit, recognize that it could have political repercussions. The church sees itself as an agent of peaceful change in Cuban society at a time when the Marxist system is under pressure.
"The gospel must become alive in man and transform his life, give him what he is searching for," said Monsignor Emilio Aranguren, bishop of Cienfuegos and secretary-general of the Catholic Bishops Conference. "Faith makes an impact and inspires commitments."
The Pope's visit to Cuba was arranged last year when President Fidel Castro met John Paul at the Vatican.
"This is good for the government," said Enrique Lopez Oliva, professor of history at Cuba's National University. "The visit is a symbolic break of the embargo and the isolation of Cuba."
"The government knows that the church is the only organized institution that can face up to it," he said. "But the church is not going to fight for power. It wants to be an instrument of reconciliation in
"The visit is a symbolic break of the embargo and the isolation of Cuba."
Enrique Lopez Oliva Cuban professor of history
a time of transition."
In Cuba, the Catholic Church has never played the significant political and social role it did in other in other Spanish-speaking countries, said Jorge Ramirez Calzadilla, director of the Center for Psychological and Sociological Research.
As winds of independence swept the region, Cuba remained strongly attached to Spain by a conservative ruling class that kept slavery legal until 1885.
While in other countries the church evangelized the Indians, in
Cuba it largely ignored the black population that mixed handed-down African religions and Catholicism to create a religion now known as Santeria.
The socialist revolution that brought Castro to power in 1969 caught the church before the renovating movement of the Vatican II Council, and the clergy was still conservative.
Church leaders criticized the revolution, which in turn repressed religion and declared it an obstacle to socialism.
In 1993, the church issued a strong pastoral letter in which it criticized Cuba's political and economic policies and a state security system that created a fear whose reasons no one knows.
John Paul may have played a major role in bringing down communism in his native Poland, but Ramirez said he does not expect the pope to attack the Cuban system of government.
"It would be like hitting the weak and it would not look good internationally," he said. "But he could use the visit to ask for more spaces for the church."
Ethiopian drought worse than previously thought
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia — An estimated 3.5 million people will need emergency food aid this year because of drought in central and southern Ethiopia, the Ethiopian News Agency said Saturday.
There was no immediate explanation for the difference.
The National Meteorological Service said the drought resulted from the El Nino current.
The estimate, compiled by relief officials from three regions, is nearly three times higher than figures announced by the federal disaster agency two weeks ago.
Ethiopia, a country of 60 million people, suffers from periodic food shortages. In 1984, a combination of civil conflict, bad weather and political maneuvering resulted in a devastating famine.
Financial capital turns into techno dance party
bring in the expected 500,000 fans
ZURICH, Switzerland — With multicolored hairdos and wild costumes, techon fans by the hundreds of thousands replaced sober-suited bankers Saturday as Switzerland's financial capital turned into a huge rave party.
The Zurich Street Parade, now in its sixth year, is one of Europe's biggest techno parties. Swiss railways put on an extra 27 trains to
Huge trucks, also known as Love-
mobiles, crammed full of ravers,
wound their way through city streets
vibrating with the latest rave dance
music.
Costumes for both men and women left little to the imagination, with pointy metallic bras, tight neon colored fabrics and leather and spikes.
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