The Holy Mass cannot be celebrated for lack of flour for the hosts.
Newsroom (09/11/2022 11:10 AM, Gaudium Press) The economic crisis in Cuba continues to hit the population, this time affecting Catholics as the lack of wheat flour has prevented wafers from being made, leaving the faithful unable to celebrate the Holy Eucharist.
The Congregation of Discalced Carmelites in Havana announced last Wednesday that it cannot produce wafers for the country’s dioceses due to a lack of flour.
“Praise be to Jesus Christ! We inform all the dioceses that there are no more wafers for sale. We have been working with the little flour that was left, and the one in reserve has come to an end,” the women religious wrote on Facebook of Vida Cristiana, the outreach organ of the Cuban Catholic Church in charge of the Society of Jesus. “We hope and trust in the Lord that we will be able to resume work soon,” they added.
The Carmelites arrived in the country in the 18th century and are still present on the island, although with a much smaller religious community than before. According to the 2016 documentary “A Million Hosts,” there are 15 cloistered nuns who have been making the hosts that are consecrated throughout Cuba since the 1960s.
The shortage of basic products, from food to fuel and medicine, is one of the most relevant and problematic aspects of the widespread crisis in Cuba. With the COVID-19 pandemic and Russia’s war in Ukraine, the price of a ton of wheat has skyrocketed. At the end of October, the Cuban authorities listed the situation of flour supply in the national market as critical due to the lack of financing for the purchase of this grain. This situation led authorities to look for solutions to substitute the product, such as using cassava flour for the production of bread and pizzas.
However, according to the Instruction Redemptionis Sacramentum, of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, the host, however, can only be made with wheat.
“The bread used in the Holy Sacrifice of the Eucharist must be unleavened, made only of wheat, freshly baked, so that there is no danger of it spoiling because it is past its sell-by date. Consequently, bread made with other substances, even though they are cereals, cannot constitute valid matter for the performance of the Sacrifice and the Eucharistic Sacrament, nor even that which carries the mixture of a substance other than wheat, in such a quantity that, according to common usage, it cannot be called wheat bread.”
Compiled by Camille Mittermeier.
