Finally, to make CAS work, I needed to add:
'django.contrib.messages.middleware.MessageMiddleware',
to crny/settings_local.py below line 94-95, "if CAS: MIDDLEWARE_CLASSES = (".
This middleware is already included in ecwsp/settings.py. Why does settings_local have MIDDLEWARE_CLASSES = stuff and then right below MIDDLEWARE_CLASSES += more stuff? Does += by itself not just add to what's in settings.py already?