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CUBA
Freedoms restrictedChurch demands access to media
During the celebration of the Jubilee for journalists in Havana, Cardinal Jaime Ortega y Alamino demanded that the government give the Church access to the mass media, all of them under control of the Communist government of Cuba. “Access to media is as important as the respect for the religious and moral convictions of the people,” said the cardinal.
Cardinal Ortega extensively quoted the document “Ethics in Social Communications,” released on May 30 by the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Social Communications. “As the document says, media can be used to block a community and diminish the integral well-being of the people, marginalizing or isolating them, and favoring hostility and conflict,” he said. “Ignoring or marginalizing religious experiences is another temptation of the media,” said the cardinal.
Although the Catholic Church in Cuba has between 25 to 30 local magazines and newspapers, none of them has a national circulation and most of them circulate among church-going Catholics from hand to hand. The cardinal said that Catholic communicators must be “creative to keep in mind the well-being of the whole Church,” while access to the mass media is still denied.