CUBA - latest development

On February 25, 2008, Raul Castro officially replaced his brother Fidel in a well-prepared "change of the guards". Though, Raul is president now, Fidel Castro will remain an important figur in the background of Cuban politics.
(source: "Euro News" citing "Cubavision")


First thing we learnt from Castro's Cuba after that change:
Following an invitation from Jaime Cardinal Ortega y Alamino, Archbishop of Havana, German missionaries of the order of Saint Benedict are going to found a monastery on Communist Cuba, a mission imagined to be impossible up to now. As Archabbot Jeremias Schröder OSB of the Ottilien Missionary Benedictines put it:
"The role of the church in society is no longer rejected in Cuba. It is again valued. The cardinal succeeded in achieving a reasonable level of understanding with the government. Thus relations with the church in Cuba clearly improved, and one might say, 'liberalized.' This development is also a result of the visit of Pope John Paul II in January 1998. A further impulse was surely the February 20-26 visit of Tarcisio Cardinal Bertone, on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the Pope's trip"
(source: "Radio Vatikan online" and "What's New OSB",
March 5/6 2008)