Mercedes Hernandez Valdez is a volunteer with Caritas Cubana and runs a soup kitchen in San Agustin parish in Havana. CRS works in Cuba through Caritas Cubana to tend the needs of the most vulnerable. Photo by Robyn Fieser/CRS

By Robyn Fieser

With 18 percent of its 11 million people over the age of 60, Cuba is the country in Latin America with the second largest concentration of elderly people.

That is due in part to the country’s health care system and longer life expectancies, low birth rates, and a good amount of emigration without the counterbalancing immigration. In other words, while plenty of people leave Cuba, most of them younger. There isn’t a lot of immigration into the country to take their place. Meanwhile, the population is getting older and living longer.

For more than 20 years, Caritas Cubana has made it a priority to help care for Cuba’s elderly, who tend to be poor and marginalized. Some 7,000 volunteers throughout the country’s 11 dioceses work together to make life a little easier for older people, many of whom live alone and struggle to make ends meet on the small pensions they receive.
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By Robin Fieser

The Pope arrives in Havana on Tuesday and the old city’s cobblestone streets are teeming with camera-toting tourists eagerly awaiting his arrival. Hotel lobbies are bustling, restaurants are hopping, and a fleet of 1950s American cars cruises up and down Havana’s main streets shuttling tourists from one sight to the next.

Far from the tourist center is A La Mar, an urban enclave created in the early 1960s for supporters of the revolution. A La Mar was originally designed as a new city for the “new man” of the revolution, based on communist and atheist ideas. Today, it is a “bedroom community” with no jobs, no services, bad transportation and widespread poverty, said Father Isidro Hoyos.

Our friends from Caritas Cubana took me there this weekend to show me a program for people with Down syndrome. Each Saturday for three hours, 18 children with Down syndrome and their families — mothers, fathers, sisters, and brothers — meet at Father Hoyos’ parish house in A La Mar to share their experiences and learn from one another.
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By, Bishop Gerald Kicanas, Chair, Catholic Relief Services’ Board of Directors

Later this month, I have the privilege of traveling with several other brother bishops from the United States to join our Holy Father on his visit to Cuba. Pope Benedict XVI follows in the footsteps of his predecessor John Paul II, the first pontiff to visit Cuba, in 1998. This time, Our Holy Father comes to Cuba as a “Pilgrim of Charity” to celebrate with the Church in Cuba the 400th anniversary of the discovery of the image of Our Lady of Charity of El Cobre.

Pope Benedict is reaching out to an often isolated island nation that has a history of discord with our country. His presence in Cuba will send a message that we are all one human family, called to live in peace, despite our political differences.
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Images of submerged streets and mangled roofs have faded from the headlines. But the greatest storm to touch down in Cuba in decades is still very much a reality for Cubans, CRS, and its partners providing outreach from Miami.

Hurricanes Gustav and Ike tore through areas of Cuba in August and September, causing record damage and forced 3 million residents from their homes. This was no ordinary storm season. Cubans face a long and arduous road to recovery.

Outside of the Daughters of Charity in Miami volunteers stand by a shipment of relief supplies that will be sent to Cuba to help victims of Hurricanes Gustav and Ike. Photo by Kai T. Hill/CRS.

This is why the front lawn of the Daughters of Charity in West Miami remains filled with relief supplies. With the help of CRS, the Daughters of Charity this week will have sent 21 large shipping containers of food, medicine and hygiene supplies among other items. So far over $1 million in relief has been sent to the country, says CRS’ Lynn Renner, who recently visited the sisters and the Miami Archdiocese.

Under a canopy of palm trees, petite but stalwart nuns and dozens of volunteers work side by side to sort and pack goods bound for the island.

“They were going about their business very intently,” says Renner. “They have the help they needed and are saying we want to do this to help. They were serious about making sure that everything was categorized properly and of good quality.”

In total, CRS and Daughters of Charity plan to send more than 700,000 pounds of food and medicines and other relief supplies to the island.

CRS is also sending 5,000 roofing panels to Cuba. They were provided by the Friends of Caritas Cuba.

You can also help by making a donation to CRS’ Latin America and Caribbean Severe Weather Fund.

Kai T. Hill, CRS associate web producer