How Fidel's Faith Remained a Mystery to the End

When the Brazilian friar Frei Betto met Fidel Castro in 1980 in the Nicaraguan capital of Managua, the two had a dense conversation about religious freedom in Cuba that led to a bestselling book that helped pave the way for a church-state rapprochement, and eventually, the visit by Pope John Paul II.

That book laid bare Fidel’s complex relationship with the Catholic faith of his childhood in 1940s Cuba, where as a child he was educated by Spanish Jesuit priests at an elite private school in the island’s southern city, Santiago.