The dominant religion of Cuba is Christianity. According to the Roman Catholic Church, 60% of the country's inhabitants are its followers. However, Christianity on Liberty Island is in most cases modified under the influence of the traditions of the African Yoruba people brought to Cuba during the slave trade. As a result of the synthesis of Catholic positions and the African cult, several variants of a peculiar religious trend, called santeria, were formed. Followers of this tradition prefer to be called lukumi, and perhaps this syncretic religion is most common among Cuban society.
There are several more religious areas on the island with a smaller number of followers, as well as a considerable percentage of the atheistic population.
Catholicism
According to the Roman Catholic Church, 60% of Cuba's population are Catholics, of which only 5% regularly attend Mass. However, according to an independent study by the Pew Research Center, 59.2% of Cubans are the total share of Christians, including all denominations.
Catholicism played an important role in the history of Cuba from the moment when in 1492, a few days after arriving in the New World, Columbus, the island was discovered. Colonization began in 1511: conquistador Diego Cuellar founded the Catholic Church in Cuba with the first priest, Bartolome Casas, known as the "protector of the Indians." Since then, the Catholic religion in Cuba has become the faith of most people who inhabit the island.
However, after Fidel Castro came to power in 1959, restrictions were imposed on church activities, and even the Christmas holidays were banned. After the end of the Cold War, the atheistic principles set forth in the Cuban constitution were eliminated. Catholics have been able to join the party since 1990. Christmas has been a national holiday since 1998, and in the same year Pope John Paul II paid an official visit to Cuba, meeting in person with Fidel Castro. In 2012, Benedict XVI also visited the island and became a guest of Fidel and Raul Castro.
Other Christian denominations
The Protestant religion in Cuba was introduced by the British from 1741 and spread especially after the British conquered the western part of the island in 1762. Since the 1990s, the era of church growth in the state called the Great Awakening, the number of Protestants has increased significantly and by 1998 reached 400,000 active followers, compared with 500,000 Catholics attending the service. In recent decades, the country has seen rapid growth in evangelical Protestants, whose membership today is estimated at 5% of the total population, including Baptists, Pentecostals, Presbyterians, Anglicans, Methodists, and Lutherans.
Other Christian denominations are represented by the Greek Orthodox Church, the Russian Orthodox Church, as well as the marginal movements of Jehovah's Witnesses and the Mormon Church.
Santería
Cuba is the cradle of such a phenomenon as santeria - an interweaving of Christianity, West African and some Native American cult traditions. During the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries, many slaves of the Lukumi (Yoruba) ethnic group, originally from West Africa, were brought to the island to work on sugar plantations. They were distinguished by a special industriousness and gentle disposition, because their number amounted to about 34% of the total number of slaves in Cuba. The religion of santeria developed from the cult of these tribes, mixing with the elements of Christianity, which allowed the slaves to maintain their traditional beliefs and practice Catholicism.
For example, La Virgen de la Caridad del Cobre (Our Lady of Mercy) is the Catholic patroness of Cuba, is considered its symbol and is highly revered by the population of the island. Santeria was associated with the African goddess Ochun, whose day now coincides with the important Cuban holiday of Our Lady of Mercy on September 8th. Another example: variants of this religion are practiced by the sects of Palo Monte and Abacua, who spend most of their pseudo-Catholic liturgy in African languages.
According to the report of the US Department of State, up to 80% of the island’s population, one way or another, uses the services of people practicing sanitation, whether it is counseling, fortune-telling, healing, or witchcraft.
Judaism
Cubans trace Jewish descent to marranas (anusim), Spanish and Portuguese Jews who were forced to convert to Christianity, who came to the island as colonists or corsairs. However, few of their descendants practice Jewish worship in Cuba today. More than 24,000 Jews lived on the island in 1924, and a large number immigrated to the country in the 1930s. But after the communist revolution of 1959, 94% of Jews left for the United States and other countries, and in 2007 in Cuba, there were about 1,500 members of the Jewish community, mainly in Havana. Since then, several hundred more have emigrated to Israel.
Islam
Islam is not yet a large religion in Cuba. At some point, about 1,500 - 2,000 students from Middle Eastern countries, mainly from Pakistan, concentrated in the country. In 2001, the Assistant Secretary General of the Muslim World League (MWL) arrived on the island to negotiate for permission by the Cuban authorities to establish an Islamic organization that would support the Cuban Muslim community. Also, the purpose of the visit was to obtain permission to build a mosque and a center for the spread of Islamic culture. According to a 2009 Pew Research Center report, there were 9,000 Muslims on the island, accounting for 0.1% of the population. As of 2012, most of the nearly 10,000 Cuban Muslims were converted Islamists.
As of July 2015, the Turkish Religious Fund has opened its first prayer room for Cuban Muslims, and has also funded the construction of the first mosque in Cuba.
Other spiritual directions
What religion is represented by religious minorities in Cuba? There are very few in the country. According to spiritual beliefs, 0.1% of the population of the state is distributed among the followers of Hinduism, the Bahá'í faith, Buddhism and some non-religions. The believing community of the Chinese people accounts for 0.2% of the total population of the island. It should be added that 18.0% of Cubans declared themselves to be agnostics, and 5.1% said they were atheists.