Miami Cubans pray for freedom on the island

MIAMI — Away from the raucous street parties of Little Havana — where the noise of banging pots and pans were the baselines for protest chants — Ermita de la Caridad’s round sanctuary reverberated with prayer and acoustic songs of worship.

But the priest at "Shrine of Our Lady Charity" made no mention of former Cuban dictator Fidel Castro's death during that first Mass on Sunday morning.

It irked Lourdes Figueroa, an American Catholic whose parents are Cuban. She had gone to the iconic church expecting more of a statement from the clergy.

"It hurt," said Figueroa, who wore a Cuba-shaped pin under a U.S. flag pin on her sweater. "It was humiliating."

Cubans flocked to La Ermita church for comfort Sunday. About 300 or so people attended the 10 a.m. Mass there.

The exile community knows La Ermita as a place where Cubans can turn in joy and sorrow.

The church is steeped in Cuban culture. It is named after the country's patroness saint, Caridad, another title for the Virgin Mary.

Exiles have supported the church in the decades after Castro's 1959 revolution. The building is home to a well-known mural of Cuban history that stands behind the altar.

Visitors bring flowers to the church as an offering to the Virgin Mary or to honor people who have died. Refugees who survive crossing the Florida Straits by raft visit the bayside church as a thank you.

Silvia M. Garrigo, one of Figueroa's companions at Mass, said Cubans should step outside institutions, even the church, and pray for unity between those who live on the island and those who left it.

After Castro became Cuba's leader, his regime divided those sets of Cubans through propaganda, Garrigo said.

Everyone should work to find ways of healing Castro's fabricated rifts, she said.

"The powers that be in the political realm are not capable of truth. Their system of governing and oppression is based on nontruth. So reconciliation with the government is a fantasy," Garrigo said. "There is no one other, in my mind, that hates Cubans and hates Cuba more than the Castros."

Outside, William Rodriguez had parked his van at Shrine of Our Lady Charity to seek just that — some charity.

Rodriguez, 50, has diabetes. Doctors managed to save his foot after a bout of gangrene, he said, but they cut off a toe. His elbows are covered in scabs.

He went to the church to ask for food and gas money. Although his parents fled communist Cuba, in part, to avoid economic hardship, Rodriguez said he has lived in his van for at least two years.

So while Castro’s death sparked waves of celebrations among exiles in Miami, Rodriguez doubted anything would soon change — for him or the island.

He still will be homeless. And the people of Cuba still will be under the rule of the Castro family, Rodriguez said.

"I'm pretty much hurting like the Cubans are hurting, even though I'm in America," Rodriguez said.

Rodriguez said he considers himself a man of faith in God — he became a born-again Christian about a decade ago — but he has little hope that Cuba will ever be the place of the exile community's dreams.

Cubans in the United States might never live on that island again, even after every Castro is gone, he said.

"It hasn't looked good for many years."