• Submitted by: manso
• Society
• 08 / 14 / 2010

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AFP. For the first time since the Cuban revolution half a century ago, an icon of Cuba's patron saint is making the rounds of the island in a sign of a gradual rapprochement between the Cuban authorities and the Catholic Church.

The pilgrimage's send-off took place Sunday at the shrine to the Virgin of Charity of Copper, in a valley peppered with copper mines near Santiago de Cuba, 950 kilometers (590 miles) east of Havana.

Its year-and-a-half journey through the Cuban countryside is a highlight of festivities organized by the church to mark the 400th anniversary of the virgin's appearance, according to legend, to three fishermen lost in a storm.

In a rarity for this officially atheist country, Cuba's state-controlled television on Monday rebroadcast the mass given in the shrine by the archbishop of Santiago, Monsignor Dionisio Garcia.

It was the latest example of a slow thaw in church-state relations, which were frigid for decades after the 1959 Marxist revolution and only began to change around the time of Pope John Paul II's historic visit in 1998.

Cardinal Jaime Ortega has recently played a central role as a mediator with Raul Castro, Fidel's brother and successor, to obtain the release of political prisoners.

So far, the church has obtained the freedom of 21 political prisoners - all of whom have left the island - and a promise that 32 more will be released by November.

With the pilgrimage by the effigy of the Virgin of Charity of Copper, which is supposed to finish its run December 10, 2011 in Havana, the church hopes to project a message of dialogue and reconciliation.

"To you, sign and link of unity, we pray on behalf of all the children of the fatherland and for whom we want what is best for Cuba," says a prayer accompanying the effigy, referring to the country's two million emigres and their children, most of whom live in the United States.

The image of the virgin - a dark-skinned doll dressed in gold and mounted in a glass cage - was borne in a procession from the shrine to its first stop in the town of San Luis, escorted by two ranks of motorcycles and greeted by hundreds of people, a witness said.

Many Cubans associate the Virgin of Charity of Copper to the goddess of love Ochun in Santeria rites, which mix Catholicism with African cults.

The only other time it has made a pilgrimage was in 1951-52 to mark the 50th anniversary of the Cuban republic, after centuries of colonial rule by Spain.

That pilgrimage also was initiated by then archbishop of Santiago, Monsignor Enrique Perez Serantes, who in May 1955 intervened with Cuban authorities to obtain an amnesty for Fidel and Raul Castro, imprisoned after a failed 1953 assault on a military barracks.

Fidel, who would later declare himself a Marxist, wore a medal of the virgin given to him by his mother Lina when he led a guerrilla uprising in the Sierra Maestra.

And when the revolution triumphed on January 1, 1959, Lina went to the shrine to thank the virgin for preserving her son's life.

By Carlos Batista, AFP August 12, 2010
Source: www.vancouversun.com/