HAVANA, Cuba. – Like every October 28, the Parish Church of San Judas Tadeo, in Centro Habana, woke up full of parishioners who, on the day of the saint of the same name, raise their prayers for his divine intercession in the difficult economic, political and social situation they are going through. the Cuban people.
Religious faith accompanies Cubans in their desire to find solutions to the urgent problems faced by every home on the Island. For this reason, the streets that surround the parish of San Judas and San Nicolás, in the capital neighborhood of Los Sitios, where San Nicolás, Rayo and Tenerife meet, they receive a large number of people throughout the year who pay tribute to this saint, known as “the patron saint of difficult and desperate cases.”
Built in a neoclassical style and completed in 1857, the parish is located in the middle of a deteriorated urban environment, the epicenter of constant landslides.
On this festival of October 28, not only the devotees gathered, but also those who sought alms for their daily sustenance. Others took advantage of the occasion to boost their businesses: the sale of flowers, crafts, stamps and green candles had good demand and acceptance, except for some tensions that arose between sellers and government authorities.
Several civil authorities approached their sales stalls, in front of the main entrance of the temple, to ask for licenses and tell them that they were disturbing the area in which they were located.
“What really bothers me is the trash can they have in the church and that they do not solve. That’s what bothers them,” a flower seller rebuked them, visibly upset. “What the Party has to be interested in is the filth we are living in,” he shouted at them as they got lost in the tumult.
The woman was alluding to the landfill that, for decades, has remained on one side of the temple.
A saint for hard times on the Island
Saint Jude Thaddeus was one of the 12 apostles and bears the surname Thaddeus to differentiate him from Judas Iscariot, the traitor. Devotion to this saint took root in medieval Europe, particularly in the 16th century.
His prayer is recited in times of distress or when it is felt that no help is available. Many people carry Saint Jude Thaddeus medals and little cards with them every day. These objects are venerated as protection and at the same time serve as a reminder to pray to the saint in every difficult moment and in every desperate cause. On days like these, devotees and visitors to the parish usually dress in green and white and light candles of the same color.
In the context of Afro-Cuban religious syncretism, San Judas Tadeo is little recognized. For followers of Santeria, it is associated with Abbata, the nurse who accompanies Inle, the divine doctor, which relates it to health workers. Others consider it a manifestation of Oggún. The truth is that his veneration attracts many to the small space where the best-known image of the saint in Havana is located.
Since the 1990s, coinciding with the serious economic and social crisis that the country faced after the fall of the socialist bloc, Cuba experienced a religious resurgence that modified the complex relationship between religion and the State. According to research of the Department of Socio-Religious Studies of the country’s Ministry of Science and Technology, approximately 85% of the Cuban population identifies with some religious sentiment.
On the other hand, the Cuban Catholic Church estimates that about 60% of the population is baptized, although it is difficult to determine how many nationals are practitioners in a society where religious syncretism, which mixes Yoruba worship with Catholicism, is common. The reality is that Cubans have learned to ask favors from both their Catholic saints and their orishas, requesting everything from housing to visas.
A visa “processor” in the midst of a migratory wave
Known as “the lawyer of impossible causes,” in Cuba San Judas Tadeo has been renamed “the patron saint of visas,” which is why the island’s devotees turn to him.
For more than 40 years, Cubans have begun to invoke it especially to obtain visas that allow them to leave the country. The oldest faithful of the parish of San Judas relate that, at the beginning of the Revolution, in the 1960s, a man begged the saint for help to obtain a visa, emigrated to the United States and thus began a cult that also has a presence in Miami.
The Havana temple, which is the only one dedicated to Saint Jude in Cuba, has accumulated a particular fervor over the years: every October 28 it is filled with thousands of visitors from all over the Island. This massive attendance is considered an indicator sociological analysis of the realities that the country is experiencing. According to experts, the large influx to the church reflects the people’s response to the crises and adverse situations they face.
According to the Department of Socio-Religious Studies“religion can be understood as a thermometer of how one lives, thinks and feels in a society. Furthermore, by forming the universe of representations it intervenes in the definition of meaning and the orientation of social practices. Contradictory, dynamic and multidetermined, religion can become an evaluative parameter of development and tensions within society, institutions, groups and individuals.”
Popular faith assures that Saint Jude is compliant, but he needs to be told what he has done, a belief that justifies all the stories of miracles to the desperate people who haunt his temple. According to the website of Cuban Studieson the Island “the beneficiaries of the invocation of Saint Jude before God are always quick to transmit their miraculous stories, such as the cure of childhood cancer in the worst possible moments of the Special Period or obtaining multiple refugee visas to escape from Cuba as a family at a time when the receiving country only issued one visa at a time.”
This year, in the celebration of his day, a Cuban family attended to entrust his process of parole humanitarian; a woman asked him to meet her daughter in Spain; another sought comfort in prayer because her son left the Island.
There are also stories of people who visit it before attending an interview to travel to the United States, or presenting themselves for a visa at an embassy, or requesting permission from the Cuban Government to leave the country.
The systemic crisis affecting Cuba, along with an increase in political repression in recent years, has generated the most significant wave of migration in the country’s history. Between 2022 and 2023, Cuba lost more than a million citizens, according to data from the National Statistics Office (ONEI).
The majority of these Cubans have arrived in the United States. According to US immigration statistics, from October 2021 to June 2024, 645,122 Cuban nationals arrived in the North American country seeking asylum across the border with Mexico and through the immigration program. parole created by the Joe Biden administration.
According to Jorge Duanyan immigration expert who directs the Cuban Research Institute at Florida International University (FIU), this massive flight can be interpreted as a manifestation of widespread discontent with the economic and political situation of the Island. “Thousands of Cubans, especially the youngest, have lost faith in the future of their country and have decided to seek better fortune abroad.”
