US Embassy Official Meets Cuban Pastor Detained for Public Prayer

Mike Hammer, the top US diplomat in Cuba, publicly announced a meeting with Pastor Rolando Pérez Lora, the independent evangelical preacher from Matanzas whose arrest last month for uploading a Bible teaching to YouTube drew international condemnation.

"A pleasure to meet with Pastor Rolando Pérez Lora known as the Pregonero de Cristo," Hammer wrote, noting that the pastor described "his experience of being detained in front of his wife and children simply for praying in public."

Officers arrested Pérez Lora on March 15 in a public park in the Peñas Altas neighborhood of Matanzas, one of only two spots in the area with public Wi-Fi access. The pastor had just finished uploading a weekly Bible teaching video to his YouTube channel, also called Pregonero de Cristo (Christ's Herald), when police moved in. His wife, Gelayne Rodríguez Ávila, captured the incident on her phone and shared it to social media. The cries of the couple's young children are audible in the footage.

"We were making a video in the park, and they are taking Pastor Rolando away because he uploaded a video reading the Bible to his YouTube channel," Gelayne said in the recording. The pastor, addressing the two officers directly, protested: "You're mistreating me for no reason; I haven't done anything wrong; this man is mistreating me." He was held for approximately three hours before being released.

The arrest landed during one of Cuba's most volatile stretches in years. Seven consecutive nights of blackouts, combined with acute shortages of food and medicine, had pushed citizens into the streets across the island. In the early hours of March 14, protesters in the city of Morón, Ciego de Ávila, sacked and burned the local offices of the Cuban Communist Party. That same day Pérez Lora was arrested, journalist Yoani Sánchez was blocked from leaving her Havana apartment by a masked State Security agent.

The crackdown on religious figures continued the next day. On March 16, Pastor Elier Muir Ávila, who leads the Tiempo de Cosecha Independent Church in Morón, was arrested alongside his 16-year-old son, Jonathan Muir Burgos. The pastor was released the same day; his son remained in detention, accused of involvement in the March 13-14 protests.

Pérez Lora, a member of the Evangelical League of Cuba, told Christian Solidarity Worldwide that authorities have targeted him since becoming a pastor in 2011. He previously led a church in Las Tunas province, where State Security summoned him repeatedly and sent police patrols to his home. "Every time we went out to do a spiritual walk, to pray for the town, we were followed constantly by the police," he said.

The numbers behind the pattern are stark. The Cuban Christian Alliance documented 996 repressive actions against religious leaders in 2024 alone, and Cuba's Observatory for Human Rights recorded 231 repressive actions in February 2026. The US Commission on International Religious Freedom listed Cuba among nations with severe religious freedom violations in 2026. Religious groups constitute the largest sector of independent civil society on the island, a fact authorities appear to treat as a direct threat.

Anna Lee Stangl, Director of Advocacy at Christian Solidarity Worldwide, condemned the arrest: "The authorities must immediately cease their harassment of him and all other religious leaders and others who are simply seeking to address the urgent needs across the island."

After meeting with Hammer, Pérez Lora published a statement pressing for political change. "It is time to wake up and lose fear," he wrote. "God, homeland, and freedom.