Cuba has first new Catholic church for decades

A new Catholic church in Cuba is being built – the first for 60 years.

Funding for the church is being donated by a parish in Florida, USA.

Father Ramon Hernandez, who with his parishioners bankrolled the project, says he is looking forward to the inauguration Mass taking place early next year.

Hernandez, who comes from Cuba, said he used to celebrate Mass in “churches hidden in the homes of faithful families”.

He left Cuba in the 1980s.

The motivation for his parish helping pay for the church was to create a greater spiritual connection between Hernandez’s parish of Tampa, Florida, and Cuba.

The new church will be in Sandino, in the west of Cuba. It will be called the Parish of Divine Mercy of Sandino.

It will be able to seat 200 people.

Hernandez says Cuba is changing from the days of Fidel Castro’s communist era.

The new church and a refurbished synagogue in Havana are evidence of Cuba’s progress in religious freedom, he says.

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