The Discalced Carmelite nuns of Havana, who make most of the hosts consumed by the Catholic Church on the island, announced this Tuesday that they will resume their production. The nuns had lamented in a prior statement that the lack of flour throughout the country prevented them from maintaining the usual supply to the Cuban dioceses.
“To our surprise, this news went viral,” the Carmelites pointed out in their note, published by Christian life, the publication of the Cuban Jesuits. Alluding to the biblical “multiplication of the loaves”, they detailed that they had received flour from the United States, Puerto Rico, Spain, by institutions and individuals, and also “the allocation that we have from the State.”
“Now we resume work to be able to offer this service to the Church that is on pilgrimage in Cuba as soon as possible,” they added.
“We have ended up buying the hosts in Havana because there is a flour contract between the government and the Carmelites, which apparently does not exist in other dioceses,” he explained to 14ymedio the priest from Camagüey Alberto Reyes. The most practical thing for the Church was to “unify” the purchase and resort to the Havana convent.
Several priests confirmed to this newspaper that the shipment of flour from which the nuns’ allocation would be extracted “was already in the port.”
Otherwise, they would have to manufacture each batch of hosts in the provinces, dealing with “the flour problem,” says Reyes. “Despite the contract of the Carmelites with the State, the process is complicated. The flour is delayed, it runs out, many signatures are needed to deliver it. But, good or bad, it was resolved.”
Several priests confirmed to this newspaper that the shipment of flour from which the nuns’ allocation would be extracted “was already in the port,” as they had informed the Catholic Church. “I don’t think this will reach a crisis, or that we can’t celebrate mass because we don’t have hosts,” Reyes said.
On November 2, the Discalced Carmelite nuns regretted working “with the little flour that was left” and foresaw the stoppage of the national supply of hosts. The message, accompanied by a telephone line for anyone who wanted to help, sparked controversy and the solidarity of many Catholics on the island and in exile.
With the stoppage in manufacturing, the convent of the Discalced Carmelites in Havana would have lost one of its main livelihoods, since the purchases of the dioceses contribute to their economic self-sufficiency. The monastery also faces the obstacle of power cuts to normalize its production.
In the event of a new crisis, an alternative would be to import the required quantities of wafers from the United States or Europe. But even then the problem would not be solved, since “it is not a product that can be stored indefinitely”, as he explained to 14ymedio José Luis Pueyo, a Spanish priest based in Caibarién. “It is convenient that it does not take too long to consume them, therefore production and supply must be continuous,” he said.
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