‘Looking for Hope’: In Havana’s Darkness, Cubans Turn to Faith as Crisis Deepens
HAVANA — In the cool darkness of the sacristy, the Rev. Ariel Suárez Jáuregui pulled on his vestments: a white ankle-length robe and a bright green stole. Then he entered the 19th-century sanctuary of Our Lady of Charity Catholic Church.
Incense hung in the air beneath the Baroque-style dome. Eight small fans blew toward about 35 parishioners scattered among the wooden pews—a modest luxury in a capital starved of electricity. As Father Suárez read from the Old Testament, sang hymns and urged the faithful to seek the Holy Spirit’s guidance on today’s “grave and urgent problems,” some swayed on their feet in the heat like Cuban palms.
After the service, most stayed to speak with him, a ritual he has kept after every Mass in 27 years as a priest. In hushed voices, they shared their fears and asked for help.
For decades, the Roman Catholic Church in Cuba has functioned as a de facto social safety net. Once despised by Cuba’s communist, atheist government, it has become one of the most credible advocates for ordinary Cubans and a rare broker between competing political ideologies.
In May, the United States set aside $100 million in aid for Cuba. The Vatican agreed to serve as an intermediary and distribute the assistance through Caritas Cuba, a Catholic-affiliated organization. This summer, cargo planes carrying pallets of rice, beans, cooking oil, sugar and toothpaste began arriving on the island.
As Cuba’s crisis deepens, priests such as Suárez are on the front lines, securing supplies and ministering directly to their flocks.
On a recent Tuesday after Mass, one woman asked him to pray for her pregnant daughter, who had fallen and been rushed to a hospital. Another, who had traveled from Matanzas to Havana, said she was alone in Cuba and needed a place to live. A man urgently needed medicine for diabetes.
To some, Suárez offered a quick blessing, tracing a cross in the air. To others, he handed disposable diapers or prenatal vitamins. Always, he told them to hold fast to their faith. God would see them through.
Over the years, Suárez, 53, has led congregations through prolonged blackouts, economic crises, mass migration and violent protests. Today, he said, is by far the worst he has seen his country.
“It’s the toughest—and probably the saddest—of all the times I have lived through,” Suárez said in an interview at his church office. “We are witnessing a growing deterioration in recent months across every aspect of national life.”
When the United States imposed an oil embargo on Jan. 29 and began stepping up sanctions against Cuba, it exposed decades of mismanagement of the island’s power grid. The result has been blackouts lasting for days, along with food and water shortages.
To fill the gaps, priests, bishops, nuns and volunteers across Cuba have expanded their aid: running soup kitchens, ferrying clean water, opening laundromats and delivering food to homeless people.
But Caritas and Cuban authorities do not have the resources to move all the supplies where they are needed, said Miami Archbishop Thomas Wenski, who is helping oversee the transport. A lack of warehouses and fuel cripples distribution, he said.
“There are miracles happening all the time,” Wenski said. “But it’s a drop in the bucket.”
Suárez was born in Havana and ordained in 1999. He became parish priest at Our Lady of Charity in February 2015, a pivotal moment for Cuba.
Later that year, Pope Francis visited the island, improving ties between the church and Cuban officials. In March 2016, President Barack Obama announced a rapprochement between Washington and Havana that encouraged private enterprise and benefited many Cubans economically.
“The people and church lived with a certain hope and joy,” Suárez recalled.
The situation began to deteriorate noticeably after the coronavirus pandemic as tourism dried up and the economy cratered, he said. Conditions worsened each year and then spiraled after the U.S. oil embargo in January.
Earlier this year, using funds raised in part by parishioners’ families in the United States, his church launched soup kitchens twice a week, opened a free parish laundromat for families without electricity and began cooking meals for Havana’s growing homeless population.
“There are vast voids here,” he said. “And unfortunately, as far as I can see, there doesn’t seem to be much of a glimmer of hope.”
Suárez’s day begins at 6 a.m. with morning prayer—“O God, come to my assistance. Lord, make haste to help me”—followed by coffee and cookies with his staff. By 8 a.m., he is meeting with congregants or visiting the sick at home.
He also serves as adjunct secretary of the Conference of Catholic Bishops of Cuba. Some days he meets with church officials. On others, he secures a water truck to replenish the parish’s supply or finds fresh food for kitchen staff to cook.
Walking Havana’s streets gives Suárez a daily view of the hardships. Some families he visits go weeks without running water. Others desperately need medicine.
Most alarming, he said, is the growing number of young people slumped on park benches, high on el químico, a synthetic, cannabis-based drug commonly laced with antiepileptic medication, formaldehyde or animal-grade anesthesia.
“It’s destroying so many young people,” he said. “They’re caught in a cycle of escapism, radical disorientation and a lack of purpose in life.”
As blackouts grew more frequent last year, Suárez raised funds to install a 16-panel solar power system for the church, making it one of the few buildings in this central Havana neighborhood with constant power.
He knows his parish is among the luckier ones. Other churches rarely have electricity. Their workers cook over firewood and return each night to dark, sweltering homes.
Beyond 22-hour blackouts and the absence of running water, Suárez said, the island has been hurt by a mass exodus. Many younger parishioners have fled Cuba, including youth ministry leaders and other volunteers.
An estimated 1.8 million Cubans have left the island in the past five years. About 75% are between 15 and 49, according to a 2025 analysis by the University of Navarra in Spain. They leave behind a growing population of aging relatives who cannot survive on meager government pensions.
Every Wednesday and Friday, the parish dining hall fills with more than 200 older residents, many receiving their first full meal of the week, Suárez said. On Thursdays and every other Saturday, he and other church officials deliver meals to more than 100 people living in parks and squares around Vedado and Old Havana.
“It just keeps growing,” Suárez said of the number of people his church feeds.
Between helping parishioners survive a worsening crisis, Suárez organizes one of the most important events on the Cuban Catholic calendar: the annual half-mile procession of La Virgen de la Caridad del Cobre, Cuba’s patron saint.
Crowds clog the street as a statuette of the Virgin Mary, known as La Caridad, is wheeled around the neighborhood. A marching band blares music, prayers are recited through loudspeakers, and residents scatter colorful confetti from balconies.
It is one of the year’s most anticipated events for Cuban Catholics, sometimes drawing more than 20,000 faithful into the streets outside the church.
But it was not always allowed.
Before Fidel Castro’s 1959 revolution, about three-fourths of Cubans considered themselves Roman Catholic. Castro, himself educated by Catholics, expelled hundreds of priests suspected of anti-revolutionary sympathies and denounced the church’s role in society.
Churches closed. Catholic colleges were nationalized. Attendance plummeted as Catholics avoided Mass and fled Cuba.
Castro’s anger at the church erupted in September 1961 outside Our Lady of Charity Church. The priest at the time, Monsignor Eduardo Boza Masvidal, led an unauthorized procession of La Caridad del Cobre through the streets. Police fired into the crowd and killed a young man, according to an account by Time magazine.
Days later, Masvidal and more than 130 other Cuban priests were expelled from the island on Castro’s orders.
La Caridad’s street procession was halted for nearly four decades—until Pope John Paul II’s historic visit to Cuba in 1998 helped rekindle relations between Havana and the Vatican. It has been a yearly occurrence since.
On Sept. 8, more than 1,000 people crowded the streets near Our Lady of Charity Church to follow the statuette on an 11-block journey around the neighborhood. Some wore yellow, the saint’s historic color; others hoisted their own statuettes of the Virgin they affectionately call Cachita. White-robed clergy walked among the crowds, swinging incense and filling the street with fragrant clouds.
“It reminds us that God walks with us, that we are not alone,” Suárez said, “that God and the Virgin Mary walk among men.”
The church has for years intervened in negotiations between Cuba and the United States.
Clergy helped broker a deal between Havana and Washington in 2015 that restored relations after more than five decades of hostility and laid the groundwork for Obama’s historic visit in March 2016. President Donald Trump later reversed many of those policies. In May, Secretary of State Marco Rubio met with Pope Leo XIV at the Vatican to discuss the church distributing the $100 million in U.S. aid.
The church also speaks up when relations between the two countries fracture. Two days after the White House announced the oil embargo, the Conference of Catholic Bishops of Cuba released a tersely worded statement warning of the harm it could inflict on Cubans.
“The risk of social chaos and violence among the children of the same people is real,” the statement said. “Cuba needs changes—changes that are becoming increasingly urgent—but it certainly does not need any more anguish or pain.”
Suárez called the statement prophetic and a reminder that government decisions often inflict the most harm on the most vulnerable.
“Why don’t we set aside partisan interests to truly seek the common good of people, the good of the nation, the good of a people who are suffering?” he said.
On that recent Tuesday, Suárez ended morning Mass by listening directly to the faithful who had come to church.
Among them was Barbara Díaz, 68, of Havana. She attended Mass regularly here as a child with her grandmother but stopped after becoming involved with local communist party committees. She returned in the 1990s.
Lately, more and more of her relatives are attending church, she said.
“A lot of people who stopped coming to the church are coming back,” Díaz said. “They’re looking for hope that this situation will change.”
Ileana Serrano, 57, said she had traveled from Matanzas to Havana looking for a place to stay after her family left. With no other financial options, she turned to the church.
“I’m all alone. I never have electricity. I can’t live like that,” Serrano said. “I’m a believer. If they let me live in the church, I would.”
Suárez listened to congregants’ needs, helping where he could, until everyone filed out and the church emptied.
He returned to the dressing area, removed his vestments and sat for a minute on a couch in his office. Statues of the Virgin Mary and a crucified Jesus looked down from atop a bookcase next to five wall-mounted monitors blinking with the kilowatts captured by the church’s solar panels.
Listening to his parish’s hardships and coming up with solutions is not always easy, Suárez said. Often, there are none.
“It’s overwhelming,” he said. “But I tell myself, ‘Go—because you became a priest to serve people, not lock yourself away in a glass bubble.’”
It was time for a quick lunch. Then Suárez needed to visit sick parishioners and make sure his volunteers had enough food and clean water. The clock was ticking. In a few hours, Havana would be cloaked in darkness.
He stood and got back to work.
Jervis is a national correspondent based in Austin, Texas. He reported this story from Havana. Follow him on X: @MrRJervis, or Instagram: @rjervis5905.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: “Looking for hope: In Havana’s darkness, Cubans turn to faith.”