Enrique Lopez Oliva

Standing shoulder to shoulder, the largest crowd of worshipers since Fidel Castro's Communist revolution all but silenced the Roman Catholic Church here in the early 1960s overflowed into the streets outside the Cathedral of Havana. As Cardinal Roger Etchegaray of France ended an unusual Vatican mission to Cuba with a solemn New Year's Mass, he posed a crowd-pleasing question: "What message shall I take to the Pope?" "That he come! That he come! That he come!"

Standing shoulder to shoulder, the largest crowd of worshipers since Fidel Castro's Communist revolution all but silenced the Roman Catholic Church here in the early 1960s overflowed into the streets outside the Cathedral of Havana. As Cardinal Roger Etchegaray of France ended an unusual Vatican mission to Cuba with a solemn New Year's Mass, he posed a crowd-pleasing question: "What message shall I take to the Pope?" "That he come! That he come! That he come!"

When President Fidel Castro began uttering the term "option zero" last spring to describe a hypothetical cutoff of all Soviet aid and commerce to his country, Cubans panicked. The state-controlled press, after dutifully reporting on drills by factory workers and army units to operate without petroleum, was quickly ordered to drop the subject. After a few months of uneasy calm, "option zero" came terrifyingly close to reality this week as a right-wing faction in Moscow overthrew President Mikhail S. Gorbachev and the Soviet Union hovered on the brink of civil conflict.

Throughout their 33-year marriage, pious Marta Martinez and her fervently Communist husband have maintained detente. They were married by a priest because she insisted, crying--but kept the religious ceremony secret because he was embarrassed and afraid his career would be jeopardized. Their three children were baptized but also joined the Young Pioneers, the Communist youth group. "You take charge in your communism, and I take charge of my business--religion," she told him.