BY MARIKA LYNCH

 Sister Jeanne O'Laughlin, the Barry University president who hosted last week's
 meeting between Elian Gonzalez and his grandmothers, says she ``became a
 wiser woman'' after seeing the family interact and concluded in a New York Times
 opinion piece that returning the boy to Cuba might harm him permanently.

 Elian has ``transferred his maternal love'' to his 21-year-old cousin, Marisleysis
 Gonzalez, O'Laughlin wrote in today's edition of The New York Times.

 ``I saw fear in Elian . . . and I became a wiser woman at that moment, wincing at
 my own naivete. I considered what it would mean for this boy suddenly to be
 ripped away from his surrogate mother, how this second trauma might scar him
 permanently. I saw and felt, at that moment, how wrong it would be to return Elian
 hastily to Cuba,'' O'Laughlin wrote.

 ``Elian has not yet even begun to grieve the catastrophic loss of his mother. We
 have to remember, too, what her wishes were: that she had weighed the cost of
 taking him away from his father and had chosen to come here.''

 ANSWERING QUESTIONS

 O'Laughlin could not be reached for comment late Monday. Barry spokesman
 Joseph McQuay said O'Laughlin wrote the piece to answer some of the questions
 she has received from the public.

 The university president, who told The Herald that before last week's meeting she
 believed Elian should be returned to his father in Cardenas, traveled to
 Washington, D.C., last week with a changed view. She lobbied her close friend
 Attorney General Janet Reno to let Elian remain in the United States.

 Havana reacted harshly to O'Laughlin's change of mind, even before her opinion
 piece today.

 An article published Saturday in Granma, the Cuban Communist Party daily,
 described O'Laughlin as ``the sinning nun . . . one more character in that
 contemptible circus'' in Miami Beach, the site of Elian's meeting with his
 grandmothers.

 ``She made statements that brought her closer to the line of [Jorge] Mas Santos
 . . . and announced that she would travel to Washington to join the Mafia's
 lobbying team.''

 AN EXILE DYNASTY

 Mas is the son of the late Jorge Mas Canosa and succeeds him as chairman of
 the Cuban American National Foundation.

 O'Laughlin, Granma said, ``has publicly violated one of her sacred
 commandments: Thou shalt not lie.''

 The Cuban government's demands and its seeming manipulation of the
 grandmothers' visit disturbed O'Laughlin, she wrote. Both women, Raquel
 Rodriguez and Mariela Quintana, showed signs of anxiety, ``trembling, furtive
 looks, ice-cold hands,'' according to O'Laughlin.

 Elian's father, Juan Miguel Gonzalez, also must fear the government because he
 has not yet come to U.S. soil to urge his son's return to Cuba.

 ``It troubles me that Elian's father has not come to the United States,'' O'Laughlin
 wrote. ``I realize how he must love Elian. What, if not fear, could keep a person
 from making a 30-minute trip to reclaim his son? And what might Elian's father
 fear, if not the authoritarian Cuban government itself? Could we send the boy back
 to a climate that may be full of fear without at least a fair hearing in a family
 court?''

 O'Laughlin urged for a quick resolution to the case, outside the eye of the
 cameras, in a U.S. family court.

 Herald staff translator Renato Perez contributed to this report.
 

                     Copyright 2000 Miami Herald