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TIME: "The church is discovering that being the first — and only — alternative institution to the Cuban revolution is both a blessing and a curse. As President Raúl Castro, who took over for his ailing older brother Fidel in 2008, tries to engineer politically perilous economic reforms in his severely cash-strapped nation, he seems to have decided the church is the only noncommunist entity he can trust to aid those transitions without seriously challenging his rule. Speaking to the National Assembly in August, Raúl even offered a mea culpa for decades of blacklisting "Cubans with religious beliefs.
But confrontation is exactly what many Castro critics crave. What good is the church's return to the Cuban center stage, they ask, if it doesn't spark democratic change, as the Polish church did a generation ago in Eastern Europe?"
