Celebrating the Knight's Centennial in Cuba
This article appeared in the July 2009 issue of Columbia and is reprinted here with permission of
the Knights of Columbus, New Haven, Conn--and of Maria de Lourdes Ruiz Scaperlanda, author.
by María de Lourdes Ruiz Scaperlanda
The year was 1909. Plastic was invented. Censorship of motion pictures began. And 53-year-old American explorer Robert E. Peary became the first to reach the North Pole. It was also the year that the Order founded chapters in both Cuba and Panama.
Between the 1899 census and 1908 the population of the island of Cuba, celebrated as “The Pearl of the Antilles,” increased by 30 %, reaching over two million. Roughly the size of England and smaller than Virginia, the Caribbean island struggled to come into its own, politically, economically, culturally, after a fierce battle for independence from Spain. The Catholic Church in Cuba was no exception.