With hope, young Cubans face challenges of faith and daily life

During the jubilee of youth in Rome, young people from all over the world gathered to celebrate a mosaic of universal faith. In the midst of that encounter, an inevitable question arose: how do Cuban young people live their faith in a country full of challenges?

ACI Press spoke with Fernando Mario Díaz Hernández and Cynthia Izaguirre Roldán, both, university students and witnesses of a Catholic faith that clings to everyday life despite precariousness.

They live in Camagüey, province located in the heart of Cuba, between the Atlantic and the Caribbean. According to Catholic HierarchyIt has 15 parishes and 26 priests for about 800 thousand inhabitants. Nationally, help the Church in need estimates that there are Only 370 presbyters in the 11 dioceses, which, according to the Pontifical Institution, makes Cuba the country with the greatest proportion of faithful by priest in the world: 20,872 for each presbyter.

Spiritual challenges

Fernando Mario points out that in his city “the large number of churches he possesses is a factor that makes the Catholic faith present in the daily life of society.” However, this idea contrasts pointing out that, despite this, “being a young Catholic is difficult.”

Cynthia coincides and adds that “priests are missing” and “coherence in faith, that young people live life according to their convictions, not oblivious to these.”

Also interviewed by ACI Press, Fr. Alberto Reyes Pías, from the San José parish in Esmeralda – although it takes almost 40 years of difference – shows a vision that is not very different from that of young people. The priest said that it is necessary to “look for a path that takes them to a spiritual experience, to encounter a transcendent dimension.”

Fr. Reyes Pías stressed that today they face the challenge of “choosing the values of the spirit in a world where these values are seen with indifference or even as disadvantages to progress in life.”

In this regard, he stressed that it is a real challenge for young people “to make life a meaning beyond the daily claim of survival.” He considered that the main task of the new generations is “not to lose hope that a different homeland is possible, in the midst of an environment of survival, precariousness and lack of horizons.”

The priest also warned about “an accelerated increase in Afro -Cuban religions”, which offer “an illusion of security and control over life, which in Cuba, today, is a very complicated issue, because you never know what will happen in the day, much less long term.” In addition, he stressed that these religions “do not have a moral demand, which is easy and comfortable to ‘hook’ to them.”

GENERAL CHALLENGES OF YOUTH

The challenge is not only spiritual. According to Figures Human Rights Watch (HRW) informationthe population of Cuba was reduced by 10 % between December 2021 and December 2023, mainly due to migration. Only between January and August 2024, the US border patrol arrested more than 97,000 Cubans.

On the other hand, the report describes an “economic crisis” that has caused blackouts up to 20 hours a day in some areas, along with an “acute shortage of food, medicines and other essential products.” According to HRW, in February, the Government first requested assistance to the United Nations World Food Program to obtain powdered milk for children under seven years.

The same report warns that Cubans who criticize the government “run the serious risk of being criminally prosecuted”, without being guaranteed due process. In practice, “the courts are subordinated to the Executive Power.” In addition, the State “controls practically all media.”

Signs of hope

Amid precariousness, faith remains an engine of hope. Cynthia said that “from my faith and that of many others, we can aspire to a better future” and dreams of “a country free from the bonds that limit us, where we can carry out processions and viacrucis in the hope that they tell us ‘they cannot'”.

He pointed out that one of the things that inspire her is that, despite everything, “still persists in those who seek and find a purpose in faith, as well as those who fight daily for a change in our country, despite oppression and what this can mean.”

Far from being discouraged, Cynthia has committed to “creating debate spaces and activities that show that faith is still alive in Cuba. There are still young people willing to fight for the change already kept that spark of hope on our homes.”

For his part, Fernando Mario confessed that, although at times it costs him to “maintain hope”, his faith has saved him. “When I feel that I do not give more, that it is impossible to continue, I get in front of the Lord and he comforts me, fills me with breath and strength to resist.”

Therefore, he actively participates in the youth pastoral, to be able to create, together with other young people, “a space where they can form, feel safe and recover that engine that drives life, always to the greatest glory of God.”

An encouraging future

Fr. Reyes Pías shared that he has noticed an increase in children who “grow without fear of openly recognizing their faith. Many children are alone to the Church, without their parents take them, and many children are the ones who have made their parents begin to attend the Church.”

He pointed out that, despite the emigration of young people, the communities “renew with young people who continue to arrive and who ask to make a growth process in faith, and the change in their lives is hopeful, see in them that beautiful reality that we call ‘conversion’”.

He also indicated that in his experience “it is increasingly common for couples to ask for the sacrament of marriage, and more and more people baptize their children, even if they do not frequent the Church.”

The catechumenate groups have also increased and, despite the constant emigration, “the communities are renewed.”

On an island where difficulties seem to mark every day, the testimonies of Cynthia, Fernando Mario and Fr. Reyes Pías show that faith remains much more than a shelter: it is a force that drives to dream, to resist and build a different horizon. His perseverance, woven between prayer, commitment and community, recalls that even in the most adverse contexts hope is not naivety, but a daily decision.

In the eyes of these young people and in the firm step of those who, against all prognosis, continue to fill temples and streets with processions, beat the certainty that Cuba, beyond their deficiencies, can be reborn from the heart of their people. Because perhaps the real miracle is not that external circumstances change, but in that the light of faith achieves, day after day, dispel the darkness.