Cuba’s First New Catholic Church in Six Decades Was Paid For With US$95,000 Raised Largely From Florida

• A 250-seat church, Sagrado Corazón de Jesús, was going up in Sandino, Pinar del Río
• It was described as Cuba’s first new Catholic church in about 60 years
• About US$95,000 was raised through a Tampa parish and donations at home and abroad
• Catholics in the town had previously worshipped in a house

For about six decades after the 1959 revolution, Cuba’s government did not permit new church buildings. In April 2018 the National Catholic Reporter described how that changed in Sandino, a town of about 9,000 in Pinar del Río province, where a 250-seat church called Sagrado Corazón de Jesús was nearing completion.

The church was built to serve a parish community of about 600 active Catholics who had been gathering in a house to worship. According to the report, about US$95,000 was raised through St Lawrence Catholic Church in Tampa, Florida, and from donations across the country and even abroad.

The project began in 2010, when a priest from San Luis in Pinar del Río visited Fr Ramon Hernandez and the two discussed building a church in Cuba. Hernandez saw the Sandino church as part of a wider opening, noting that permits were subsequently issued in Havana and Santiago. “The church has more space in the society and this put another step in this process,” he said.

The report placed the church within a wider revival helped by Cuban exiles and US Catholics, including the Felix Varela Cultural Center in a former Jesuit seminary in Havana. Miami’s Archbishop Thomas Wenski said: “There’s been a revitalization of the church in Cuba.”

For Jamaica, the Sandino story is about the power of the diaspora to put up bricks and mortar at home. Many rural Jamaican congregations still meet in houses, rented rooms or tents while they save for land and a building. The Tampa link shows how a single overseas parish, with a clear plan and a permitted site, can turn a long-held hope into a finished church. Jamaicans abroad who want to help a home church build should make sure the land is properly titled and the approvals are in place before the money moves.

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