The shortage of hosts has kept the Catholic Church in Cuba on edge for months, forcing it to ration supplies and rely on donations from abroad.
Now, the Basilica National Sanctuary of Our Lady of Charity of El Cobre, in Santiago de Cuba, seeks to reduce that dependency with its own solution: to start manufacturing there the hosts used for the celebration of the mass.
The Archdiocese of Santiago de Cuba reported this Wednesday that the project has already entered a testing phase thanks to donations from Spain.
«The Sanctuary of El Cobre begins, in a trial phase, the production of hosts for the Holy Mass», announced the religious institution.
According to the statement, Spanish benefactors from Madrid and Pamplona provided the necessary equipment and flour to launch the initiative.
The manufacturing will be handled by a former parishioner of the sanctuary, whom the Archdiocese described as a person of "respectable spiritual life" and who will receive guidance to take on the new task within the facilities of El Cobre.
Due to the crisis in the production of hosts that affected Cuban churches this year, the announcement made this Wednesday from the house of the Patroness of Cuba takes on special significance and could pave the way for other Catholic centers in the country to promote similar solutions.
In June, the Discalced Carmelites of the Monastery of Santa Teresa and San José, in El Vedado, Havana, announced that the prolonged blackouts were hindering their production.
For decades, that convent had been the supplier of hosts for the Catholic parishes on the island.
«Due to the lack of electricity, we are unable to produce the communion wafers,» the nuns then stated, who were forced to ration the available supplies in an attempt to provide for the various churches.
Manufacturing requires electricity to operate equipment such as the mixer used in preparing the dough and the press needed to form the wafers, so the extensive power outages ultimately affected that activity directly.
The situation forced the Cuban Church to seek help outside the country. In the following months, tens of thousands of communion wafers began to arrive from other churches in the region.
In June, the Archdiocese of Panama sent 35,000 host wafers to Cuba, while the Archdiocese of San Juan de Puerto Rico sent another 300,000 to help support the celebration of the Eucharist amid the production crisis on the island.
Two months later, the Church of Costa Rica donated another 20,000 hosts to Cuba due to the ongoing difficulties in producing them on the island.
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