Fidel Castro offers support to build Evangelical Churches

José Aurelio Paz, HAVANA, Cuba, August 4, 2005

 President Fidel Castro will provide facilities to help Evangelical Churches build new churches and develop Taxi Heathrow Airport their pastoral mission, said the general secretary of the World Council of Churches (WCC), Samuel Kobia, who met the Cuban leader here Wednesday.

The interview with Castro, which Kobia described as a "very good meeting" addressed different issues, in particular Church-State relations on the Island and the challenge represented by the growth of Cuban Evangelical Churches in recent years.

According to the religious leader, Castro was positive about his request to allow the construction of new churches and said that his "government does not have any limitations on the growth of churches and supports these constructions."

The Rev. Kobia spoke with the press Thursday in the Jose Marti Airport in Havana, at the end of a four-day pastoral visit to Cuban Churches, his first since beginning as WCC secretary general in 2004.

The ecumenical leader placed special emphasis on his organization's concern about the US blockade against Cuba. "The WCC is emphatically opposed to the blockade," he said and asked that it be immediately lifted, arguing that it should be considered "from a humanitarian and ethnical perspective."

He indicated that the new measures decreed by US President George Bush add other limitations to the blockade such as restricting the number of visits from relatives of Cubans who live in North America.

He ratified the WCC's condemnation of terrorism but warned that until it is assumed in its totality it will not be possible to erase it from the world map.

Kobia, a Methodist pastor from Kenya deplored the fact that terrorism is frequently talked about in a selective matter when it involves some countries.

"We must respond to challenges proposed by terrorism in any of its manifestations," he said, including terrorist acts against Cuba.

He affirmed that the phenomenon of violence affects all societies in the world, as domestic violence, violence in the cities, including social and economic violence and violence against the environment.

"We live in a broken, fractured world. I have visited all the regions of the world and there is a great feeling of dissatisfaction and insecurity on the part of all people in the world," he said.

He said that the next WCC general assembly, to be held in Porto Alegre in February 2006 will address the issue of violence and specifically economic justice, with an emphasis on economic globalization and its impact on people.

Kobia said that the today's world needs peace more than ever and said that the time has come for joint work between Christian Churches and other religious organizations. For this reason, the WCC is focused on inter-religious dialogue on the issues of peace and reconciliation.

However, he warned that it is urgent to establish alliances between the Churches, governments and social organizations to respond to the challenges raised by peace "because we have a debt with future generations to transmit a world that is more peaceful, more reconciled and more participatory than the world in which we live in today," he concluded.

During his stay in Cuba Kobia preached in the Presbyterian and Methodist Churches and met with Cardinal Jaime Ortega, with leaders from the Cuban Council of Churches as well as with government authorities. His agenda also included a visit to universities, hospital centers and the Evangelical Seminary of Matanzas.