Source: The New York Times
The most bizarre offering that the Rev. Jorge Alejandro has witnessed at Cuba’s most cherished shrine came from the man who bent down and began clipping his toenails. One by one, the man deposited them at the altar, among the many other mementos left by the faithful for the Virgin of El Cobre, widely considered the mother and protector of Cubans.
At this shrine in the foothills of the Sierra Maestra, Cubans leave the Virgin locks of hair, baby clothes, baseballs, diplomas, letters, candles and bouquets. They offer snapshots, trinkets, lockets and pendants as well.
Some have even left banners criticizing Cuba’s Socialist government, which might be unthinkable anywhere else on the island.
Lina Ruz, the late mother of Fidel and Raúl Castro, visited the Virgin in the late 1950s when her sons were fighting to topple the American-backed government of Fulgencio Batista. She left a metal figurine that is now kept under lock and key.
Ernest Hemingway donated the medallion from his 1954 Nobel Prize in Literature to the shrine. It was pilfered in 1986, but the police recovered it days later. The Virgin makes an appearance in Hemingway’s “The Old Man and the Sea”; the fisherman at the center of the story pledged to visit the shrine if only he managed to catch his elusive fish.
In the case of the man trimming his nails, Father Alejandro, a priest at the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Charity del Cobre, felt compelled to intervene, explaining that the man’s idea was noble but unnecessary.
“We humans relate to the body and to objects,” Father Alejandro said. “We like things to be concrete. But I try to explain that this is not a store where you give and then you get. It’s not important how beautiful the flowers are or how valuable the diamonds are that one leaves. What God wants is faith, and that’s the best offering you can give.”