The Piarist (also known as the Escolapios) Fathers in Cuba have demanded that the government return ownership of their cloister and school so they can rescue them from the ruin into which they have fallen due to state neglect.
In 1961, Fidel Castroʼs communist regime confiscated hundreds of schools and other assets from the Catholic Church, among them the cloister and school that the Piarist Fathers maintained in the Guanabacoa district of Havana.
However, the prolonged economic crisis and the negligence of the authorities have led to the gradual deterioration of both buildings.
Compounding this situation was the looting of the Piarists’ church in October 2025, during which criminals stole “candelabras for the Blessed Sacrament, vestments, and fans, smashing display cases and windows.”
“We filed a complaint, but only a few items could be recovered,” they said.
Next came a fire in March of this year at the old cloister — “abandoned for over a year by the municipal department of education without maintenance or security” and a blaze on April 9 that damaged the church door after unknown individuals set fire to trash accumulated in the street.
Interior of the Piarist Fathers’ cloister, owned by the Cuban government. | Credit: Piarists Cuba
In their post, the Piarist Fathers warned that what is being destroyed is the first Teachers College for Cuba and Latin America founded by the order in 1857 and declared a national monument in 1990. “Nationalized in 1961, state ownership brought only neglect and, now, destruction,” they charged.
They said the parties responsible for the situation are the municipal department of education and the municipal government; for while the former “abandoned the building without protection,” the latter “ignored repeated warnings from the cultural heritage authorities as well as our own.”
Furthermore, they noted, “the [Communist] Party condones criminal inaction: Promises ‘fade into bureaucratic silence’ while the looting is carried out in plain sight.”
The Piarist Fathers said they have spent “months working to reclaim these places to restore them and breathe new life into them in the service of Guanabacoa.”
They are demanding of the authorities the “immediate return of the cloister and school to the Piarist order,” an “end to empty promises,” and that “public accountability for criminal negligence” be established.
“This is not a demand [in the name of the Catholic religion]; it is the very identity of all the people of Guanabacoa that is fading away. Enough with the complicity. There is still time,” they urged.
This story was first published by ACI Prensa, the Spanish-language sister service of EWTN News. It has been translated and adapted by EWTN News English.
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