St. Lawrence in Tampa helping found church in Cuba

TAMPA For the first time since Cuba embraced Communism in 1959, a Catholic Church will be built on the island and a Tampa parish is responsible for the fundraising.

St. Lawrence Catholic Church of Tampa, through parishioner donations, has raised $45,000 half of the $90,000 needed to complete the church but enough for Cuba to approve the start of construction.

The church will be located in Sandino, a municipality in the Pinar del Ro province of Cuba that has never had a church. Catholics there have long been congregating in homes.

They already started holding Mass on the property, said Luisa Long, coordinator of Hispanic ministries for St. Lawrence church, 5225 N. Himes Ave. The first rock was put on the property location just this past September and blessed.

Fidel Castros revolution brought an end to the open practice of religion as the government officially declared Cuba an atheist nation, in line with Marxist teachings. Church properties were nationalized, forcing Catholics to congregate in homes.

More than four decades later, relations between the Cuban government and the Catholic Church began to improve in advance of a 1998 visit by Pope John Paul II. Fidel Castro declared Christmas a national holiday for the first time since 1959.

In March 2012, Pope Benedict XVI took a three-day tour of the island, further thawing the divide.

The new church construction project is a major next step, said the Rev. Ramon Hernandez of St. Lawrence, who helped bring the partners together.

And Tampa is the right city for this work, Hernandez said. We have a deep history with Cuba.

Tampas Ybor City was founded, in part, by immigrants from Cuba, and in the late 1800s emerging as the cigar capital of the world using tobacco from Cuba Tampa helped fund Cubas War of Independence against Spain.

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St. Lawrence in Tampa helping found church in Cuba