Getting Cuba started

An interview with the Rev. Yosvany Carvajal

By the RPA/Progreso Weekly team

HAVANA – The task faced by the Felix Varela Cultural Center (CCFV), run by the Archdiocese of Havana, is a challenge to the present of Cuba, aimed at the future.

The responsibility for such an enterprise was given to Cuban priest Yosvany Carvajal, the Center’s rector. This priest, slim, of average height, in his early 30s, welcomes us with amiability and answers our questions with paused, serene sentences. He ponders what he says.

Deep thoughts, clear and soft speech are his style. He does not conceal his passion for the enormous task his Center is undertaking and its possible impact, an impact it’s already having. One of the Center’s activities are the lectures on the Cuban reality given by personalities with differing political and ideological backgrounds. From the audiences, which are also varied, opponents of the government have often raised questions that take issue with the speakers.

It is a risky novelty that has made the Center, an extension of the Havana Archdiocese, a target of criticism, displeasure and pressure from the political extremes.

How did the idea to create a Cultural Center in the former site of the San Carlos and San Ambrosio Seminary come about?

Since the late 1980s, the Church has been increasing its spaces for evangelizing. This reality gained a more effective impulse with the visit of the Holy Father, the Blessed John Paul II, in 1998.

One of the areas where the Church has displayed its creativity is the dialogue between Faith and Culture. Through the Catholics who work in the fields of humanities, arts and sciences, who participate in dissimilar events by invitation and often on a personal basis, the Church has made its presence felt in the world of culture.

I’ve had the opportunity of participating in several symposia, where I have learned that many of the members of the Cuban intellectual world recognize a valid interlocutor in the Catholic Church. At the site of the old San Carlos and San Ambrosio Seminary, several groups from the Archdiocese of Havana have organized academic gatherings with researchers and university professors to discuss history, natural science, literature, politics and the Cuban reality.

The purpose of the Church always has been to bring together Catholics and non-Catholics to establish a dialogue and exchange opinions, fostering – in a spirit of respect and tolerance – links that I might even call institutional. In my opinion, this is the way we can guarantee the construction of our future.

Considering the role played by the San Carlos Seminary in the formation of the Cuban nationality and because its building was vacated when a new Seminary was built outside Havana, the Archdiocese, through its Cardinal Archbishop, decided to turn the site into a Cultural Center that bears the name of the shaper of our nation’s founders, the man who taught us to think like Cubans: Father Félix Varela.

What, exactly, are the activities planned for that space? What projects are being conducted and what projects are contemplated?

We want to continue to foster dialogue, which so far has been very fruitful, with the world of culture and its diverse manifestations. That is why the Center will make room in its centuries-old galleries for art exhibitions, such as the one displayed some months ago during the 400th celebration of the discovery of the statue of the Virgin of Charity.
There will also be space for the showing of audiovisual products and films, as well as music and singing. Many of these initiatives were begun at the time we inaugurated the Center.

The intellectual world will not be left out, of course. As I said before, it occupies a very important place in the activities of the Cultural Center, because we’ve had the privilege of hosting prestigious lecturers, national and foreign. Thus we have created a space for exchange and dialogue that opens new paths of hope to us.

Another very important role for the Center is the formation of Catholic laymen, through an Institute for Ecclesiastical Studies that will operate inside the Center, inseparably linked to the Center’s pastoral function. Through this institute, we want to form lay people who are committed to society from an eminently Christian-Catholic standpoint. And we want to continue to build bridges to the country’s intellectual sector. All this is possible thanks to the building’s convening power, its historical and cultural attractiveness.

Among the projects already operating we can mention, among others, the courses on economics and microbusinesses, such as the Master’s course in Business Administration (MBA) and the Cuba-Emprende [Cuba-Starts] project. The latter seeks to facilitate and consolidate (with the right advice) the initiatives of private enterprise that were recently started thanks to the changes in the country’s economic policy.

Other courses are given by the Department of Theological Initiation, aimed at the religious communities in the diocese, particular the rural communities. We are now preparing a study plan for laureates. Later, the Institute for Ecclesiastical Studies will offer a diploma in the Humanities.

With authorization from the Congregation for Catholic Education, we hope to grant higher-study diplomas, once we have achieved the necessary academic articulation with a system based on credits, such as exists in other universities worldwide.

What’s the relationship between the activities of the Center and the pastoral line of the Archdiocese of Havana?

The Center has links not only with the Archdiocese but also with the worldwide Church. The Holy See, through its Pontifical Commission on Culture, wishes to establish a Catholic Cultural Center in every city, where Faith and Culture may be brought together in an ever more necessary encounter.

The pastoral line of the Archdiocese of Havana has always bet, not just now, on building bridges where all Cubans, believers or not, can meet and draw up objectives whose sole goal is the evangelization of culture and human improvement.

Cuba has a Christian soul. We were reminded of that during the visit to Havana of the Blessed John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI reaffirmed it during his recent visit. To have a Christian soul means that our origins as a nation have roots in the Christian thoughts and ethics bequeathed to us by the founders of this nation. The most outstanding of these men was Father Félix Varela.

In his teachings and  his life, full of sacrifices for Cuba, Varela left us a model to be good Cubans. He said that there can be no Motherland without virtue. It is necessary to raise Man in virtue, but this virtue must be based on evangelical standards. For that reason, Father Varela continues to tell us that virtue cannot exist without religion.

Through Varela’s thinking we understand Martí’s thinking. And the Church in Cuba wants us to be capable of building a reconciled nation with room for all to participate.
The Cultural Center, which long ago was the birthplace of the nation, continues its mission as a place where science and religion, dialogue and reconciliation, faith and culture come together, never as opposites but in perfect harmony, just like Varela dreamed.

Another of the Archdiocese’s goals is the formation of lay people, who have an important role in the transformation of society, as required by their mission of facing the world. The formative work carried out for many years at the former Felix Varela Institute of Religious Science will be continued here at the Center.

I have just read the press release issued by the leadership of the Laymen’s Council’s magazine Espacio Laical [Lay Space] announcing the transfer of that publication to the Center. How will the magazine fit into the life of the Center?

As I have explained when referring to the functions of the Center, after a long assessment of the work performed by the magazine Lay Space, the Cardinal Archbishop, in mutual agreement with the magazine’s editorial board, decided to transfer the publication to the Cultural Center. Because the Center is a place of formation that offers the possibility of a dialogue between Faith and Culture, it is evident that the magazine fits perfectly within its structure.

To us in the Center, it is an honor to host Lay Space, because the magazine has earned the respect of diverse sectors of thought in Cuba and outside.

Among the magazine’s various initiatives and sections is the ability to sponsor lectures, panels and events about topics of vital importance for the present and future of Cuba. I think that the best location for the magazine is the Cultural Center, fomenting from this “Casa Cuba” that housed the old Seminary (today the Felix Varela Cultural Center), an encounter, a dialogue and a consensus among Cubans.

The magazine has expanded its Editorial Board, making it more varied with the admission of young intellectuals, Catholic and non-Catholic. Because I am the Center’s rector, I am the Board’s new director.

We want to continue to work in coordination, so the work will be fruitful and we give our readers some solid work that invites reflection, consensus and dialogue as a necessary methodology for the future.

When we affirm that this is the methodology, we don’t mean that others are not possible. They certainly exist. But opting, from faith, for a dialectic of reconciliation and dialogue is also the service a Catholic Cultural Center must offer.

In this house, we have reflected on Faith, Man and Motherland and have promoted Culture. The magazine Lay Space will be the organ of this house, whose doors are open to all men of good will, so we can sow hope on the road that leads us to the future.

 

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