Christopher Columbus, on his first Spanish-sponsored voyage to the Americas in 1492, sailed south from what is now the Bahamas to explore the northeast coast of Cuba and the northern coast of Hispaniola. Columbus, who was searching for a route to India, believed Cuba to be a peninsula of the Asian mainland. The first sighting of a Spanish ship approaching Cuba was on 28 October 1492, probably at Bariay, Holguín Province, on the eastern point of Cuba.
During a second voyage in 1494, Columbus passed along the south coast of the island, landing at various inlets including what was to become Guantánamo Bay. With the Papal Bull of 1493, Pope Alexander VI commanded Spain to conquer, colonize and convert the pagans of the New World to Catholicism.
In 1992, Cuba declared itself a secular state and permitted Catholics and others to join the Communist Party. However, religious schools have remained closed since the early 1960s.
Before the Revolution
Historically, the foundations of the Catholic Church in Cuba were considered weaker than in the rest of Latin America. Spanish colonial authorities neglected Cuba and the local church served as "a colonial backwater dumping ground for miscreant clerics". The church also struggled with anti-clericalism in Cuba, further encouraged by the growth of Freemason circles and Protestant churches, many of them of anti-Catholic outlook. The role of the Catholic Church recovered in the late 16th century - the church became the main agency of welfare and education on the island, attempted to mediate conflicts, offered priesthood as a possibility for socioeconomic mobility to poor Cubans, and contributed towards founding Cuban national identity; many Catholic priests played an important role in the Cuban independence movement, such as Félix Varela. The peak of the Cuban Catholic Church as a social force was in the 1920s and 1930s, and many Catholic organisations and movements were established in that period, such as the la Juventud Cubana in 1927, Acciön Catölica in 1928, Caballeros Catölicos in 1929 and Agrupaciön Catölica Universitaria in 1931. As political parties of Marxist outlook and labour unions became common in the Cuban society, the Church established competing parties and trade unions to promote Catholic social doctrine instead.
As Fulgencio Batista came to power in Cuba through his 1952 coup, the response of the Catholic Church was negative, as "many religious leaders had judged the regime of Fulgencio Batista as unconstitutional, and were sick of finding bullet-ridden bodies in the streets". The church focused on evangelizing and assisting the rural population and urban lower classes, while also making humanitarian interventions on behalf of Batista's political opponents. The most famous instance of the church's intervention was the intercession of on behalf of Fidel Castro, following his failed attack on the Moncada barracks in 1953. Serantes made a public appeal to spare Castro and other perpetrators, and to give them as lenient sentences possible. According to Philip Rulon, this "was interpreted to mean that the majority church was sympathetic to the revolutionary movement" by the Cubans.