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The real turning point was 2010, when Cuba's bishops started an unprecedented mediation, along with Spain, that led to prisoner releases, including those of Pay's group. Although critics like Ros-Lehtinen believe Ral forced the freed dissidents into exile--most left for Spain, but Ortega insists it was their choice--the effort gave the Cuban church new cachet. U.S. leaders not so long ago dismissed the idea of the church's gaining any leverage with the Castros; now they're imploring Benedict, as Florida Senator Bill Nelson wrote him in March, to "request a humanitarian release for Alan Gross," the 62-year-old U.S. contract aid worker whom Cuba sentenced to 15 years in prison last year for taking illegal satellite-communications equipment to the island.
As a result, if the Pope fails to make prominent mention of human-rights issues during his visit, the church could indeed look as if it's lamely sitting on Cuba's fences instead of moving or toppling them. And that, as much as any overreach, could undermine the remarkable strides the Cuban church has made in a relatively short time. Indeed, many dissidents, some of whom tried to hole up in Havana churches in March to protest the recent spate of arrests, are scolding Ortega for not speaking out more loudly and are demanding an audience with Benedict.
Expectations about the church's clout in Cuba, however, may still be overblown. A big reason: for all its recent advances, the Catholic Church doesn't, and never did, enjoy the devoted popular support in Cuba that it had in Poland during the Solidarity days. "The church wasn't as much at the root of Cuban nationality," says Clark, a Bay of Pigs veteran. In fact, the Spanish colonial era bred anticlerical sentiment among Cubans long before the Castros' 1959 revolution. That problem is compounded by the fact that the church in Cuba competes with other spiritual outlets, including Protestant evangelical faiths and the syncretic Afro-Caribbean religion Santeria--not to mention the cult of Fidel, who is still revered by many Cubans as a secular savior.
That reality, and the tight grip Ral's military and state security still have on the country, have forced the church to steer its Cuba crusade more carefully. And right now its most effective weapon may be the contrast between its operations and a government bureaucracy that even Ral blasts for corruption and inefficiency. "I'm happy the government has at least given us a chance to open businesses," Carlos Linares, a former teacher and coffee-shop owner in the western town of Viales, tells TIME. "But it is strangling us with the level of taxes."
Many of the thousands of Cubans who've attended church workshops say they've learned from them how to do business legitimately after decades of often illicit hustling in a desperate black-market milieu. "The economic reforms need an ethical posture as well," says Ortega. One participant from Santiago, who asked not to be identified, agrees. "I'm not really religious," she told me, "but the church, as you'd expect, brings a moral framework that is sometimes missing as we struggle to get by."