The session is scheduled for the morning of Jan. 25, just prior to what promises to be the best-attended Mass of the papal visit. That Mass is set for Havana's Revolution Square on the pope's last day in Cuba. Seventh-day Adventists, Methodists, Presbyterians and Episcopalians are among the larger Protestant groups. Pentecostal groups, such as the Assemblies of God, and charismatic movements within the mainline denominations are a mainstay of Cuban Protestantism today. It's emotional and has a strong African component imported by the slaves.
Pentecostal faith is experiential, communitarian, healing and body-involving.
It fits right in with the Caribbean character. Both Catholic and Protestant leaders in Cuba talk today of the nation's new interest in religion as an alternative to Cuba's faltering Marxist ideology and the despair over the poverty gripping the island. But observers of the Cuban religious scene say the ranks of the nation's Protestant churches also have grown since the 1959 revolution that established Castro's rule simply because, like the revolution, they, too, presented an alternative to a discredited Catholic Church. While the Protestant churches were also persecuted during the early years of Castro's rule, they faced fewer adversities than did the Catholic Church, which was heavily identified with the deposed government of Fulgencio Batista and actively opposed Castro's attempts to nationalize the private sector. It overestimated its power and paid a price.