Source: Rocky Mount Telegram
On January 14, 2004 Rocky Mount Telegram posted an Associated Press story that reported, "The spiritual leader of the world's 300 million Orthodox Christians will travel to Cuba next week at the invitation of President Fidel Castro to consecrate a cathedral, a regional church leader said Wednesday. Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew will arrive on Jan. 21 and consecrate the cathedral on Jan. 25, said Metropolitan Athenagoras of Panama and Central America, which includes Mexico, the Caribbean, Colombia and Venezuela...Cuba was explicitly atheist for about 25 years after Castro's revolution, but the collapse of the Soviet Bloc led the government to abandon official atheism and to openly, if warily, accept religious faith."