BOB ABERNETHY: Pope John Paul II arrives in Cuba this coming Wednesday for a five-day visit. Continuing our special reports on religion in Cuba, this week we look at the blossoming Protestant movement there, a movement that some say is growing at a faster rate than the Cuban Catholic Church. Maureen Bunyan reports.MAUREEN BUNYAN: The Catholic Church is still Cuba's largest denomination, and growing. But Protestant faiths have also seen a religious revival. It is 9:00 on a Saturday night, and this charismatic Methodist Church is filled with people of all ages. Today, Cuba has over 50 Protestant and evangelical denominations and 900 Protestant churches, but not enough to serve growing congregations. So people gather in private homes for prayer services, thousands of them scattered across the island; some legally registered, others operating in the shadows of communist society.
Unidentified Woman: My life has changed completely. I'm not the person I used to be. I used to live in darkness. Now I live in the light.
BUNYAN: The remarkable growth in Protestantism has even amazed church leaders.
Reverend MIRIAM OFELIA ORTEGA (Reformed Presbyterian Church): Here in Cuba, everybody's going, I said, even the Presbyterians.BUNYAN: Reverend Miriam Ortega runs Cuba's Ecumenical Protestant Seminary in the province of Metanzas. She recalls the Protestant exodus after Cuba declared itself communist.
Rev. ORTEGA: In the Presbyterian Church, we lost two thirds of the pastors left and more or less two thirds of the congregation -- the laypeople of the congregation.
BUNYAN: Now the Protestant churches have the opposite problem, trying to keep up with new converts after decades of atheism.
LEONEL ABARROA (Seminarian): Mostly what I was searching for was a church that I wasn't supposed to know when I was a child. I mean, I wasn't supposed to attend a service. I wasn't supposed to read a Bible, and mostly what was I searching for, was the forbidden. When I went to the church, and I got involved somehow in the discussions, in dialogues, in Bible studies, in youth groups, I found I was supposed to make opinions. I found that I was supposed to express my thoughts, my beliefs.
Reverend RAUL SUAREZ (Ebenezer Baptist Church): We're doing Christ's work, preaching the gospel and trying to solve the problems and suffering in our society in cooperation with the government.
