Back to most recent news releases • Browse archive: 2005 • 2006 • 2007 • 2008 • Email this story

Church World Service Board of Directors Joins Ecumenical, Capital Hill Outcry Against U.S. Restrictions on Religious Visits to Cuba

March 23, 2006

MIAMI -- In a resolution issued yesterday in Miami, members of the board of directors for humanitarian agency Church World Service (CWS) voiced protest of current U.S. restrictions on mission-related visits to Cuba by faith-based organizations.

The board's call for restoration of unrestricted religious travel licenses to Cuba echoed an appeal last week to U.S. State and Treasury Department officials by members of Congress and a Church World Service-led delegation of religious leaders to Washington.

The Church World Service board's resolution also underscored statements in letters sent last week by Church World Service Executive Director and CEO John L. McCullough and leaders of eleven other major U.S. denominations and ecumenical agencies to Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice and Treasury Secretary John Snow.

McCullough and CWS board members are asking that newly-imposed licensing restrictions be lifted, to once again allow unrestricted mission visits to Cuba by American faith leaders and similar visits to the U.S. by Cuban church leaders.

The resolution called for restoration of the general licenses for religious travel to Cuba that Church World Service and national and conference-level religious institutions previously held.

In Miami this week for CWS's semi-annual board of directors meeting, board members endorsing the resolution represent some 10 mainline denominations and ecumenical bodies and are among the 35 Christian denominations and ecumenical groups who support Church World Service's relief, development and refugee services worldwide.

Several denominations have independently appealed to OFAC to alter the recently tightened Cuba travel restrictions

The CWS board resolution states that "the limited, restricted licenses now offered to Church World Service and its member denominations greatly reduce the ability of U.S. churches to be a Christian presence in Cuba, and to assist Cuban churches in their important faith witness."

The group also called for the United States to grant visas for religious travel to the U.S. to officials of the Cuban Council of Churches and other Cuban religious leaders.

On March 3, Democratic Representatives James P. McGovern of Massachusetts and Barbara Lee of California and Republican Representative Jeff Flake of Arizona initiated a bi-partisan letter signed by 105 members of the House of Representatives, which appealed for lessening of the restrictions.

Last week (March 15), Acting Director, Office Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), Barbara C. Hammerle, responded to the congressional group's demands, saying "Specific licenses may be issued on a case-by-case basis to U.S. religious organizations for certain activities in or involving Cuba."

Hammerle said licenses issued under the Cuban Assets Control Regulations clause which have no restriction on the number of travelers per trip or the frequency of trips "are only available to certain religious organizations.

"Religious organizations that do not meet these application criteria, typically larger organizations made up of multiple congregational units," said Hammerle, can still be licensed but under the section of the regulation that issues a license restricting the number of travelers to 25 per trip, requiring the organization to provide a list of the travelers' names at time of licensing, and limiting the frequency of travel to one trip per calendar quarter.

Members of Congress and protesting faith-based organizations contest that while no language had been changed in section 515.566 of the regulation, OFAC had been limiting the licensing of national religious organizations, yet offering unlimited licensing of mission visits by local church congregations.

Hammerle responded that OFAC had noticed "an increased misuse of some licenses by large religious organizations and which therefore had less control of the travel groups and their activities in Cuba," citing reports of large religious groups that had traveled to Cuba and were allegedly "taking advantage of the trips to sightsee rather than to engage in missionary work."

Hammerle stated that the restrictions were "intended to help ensure that the larger religious organizations' participants actually carried out the full time program of religious activities described in the organization's license application."

However, at a March 15 meeting with OFAC and State Department officials that included members of Congress and a delegation of church officials led by Rev. McCullough, Hammerle said that OFAC was not claiming that national mainline religious denominations and ecumenical agencies had misused their licenses.

CWS's McCullough says he does not believe that either his agency, "when in Cuba on ecumenically-related agendas, or other national ecumenical or denominational organizations such as the National Council of Churches in the USA and the Presbyterian Church USA have misused their licenses.

"If some large groups are misusing unlimited licenses," said McCullough, "the regulations already provide for suspension of their licenses. Any abuses should be addressed to the groups committing them, not by censuring and restricting every national and conference-level religious organization."

McCullough says that during last week's meeting with congressional and ecumenical leaders OFAC contradicted its stated assumption, reporting that it was now having the same problems with some individual congregations who had visited Cuba .

The restricted licensing now under fire involving faith-related visits to Cuba is separate from the licensing that Church World Service also separately holds as a humanitarian agency, which is granted by the U.S. to provide humanitarian aid to Cuba.

Ironically, in other Cuba-related news, the CWS board resolution was prepared as Church World Service's Miami immigration and refugee services office began processing some of the 43 new Cuban rafters seeking asylum who made landfall near Miami on Tuesday (March 21).

Church World Service is one of the nine voluntary agencies that works with the U.S. State Department to resettle refugees in the U.S. In Miami, CWS shares caseloads for Cuban arrivals with the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

See CWS and Denominations Protest Government Limits on Religious Freedom

Media Contact:
Lesley Crosson, CWS/New York, 212-870-2676;
Jan Dragin, 781-925-1526;

Back to most recent news releases • Browse archive: 2005 • 2006 • 2007 • 2008 • Email this story