SANTIAGO DE CUBA – Pope Benedict landed in eastern Cuba yesterday for a three-day visit to take advantage of warmer Church-state relations and push for a larger Church role at a time of change on the island.
President Raul Castro was on hand at Santiago de Cuba’s seaside airport to greet the Pope, who flew in from Mexico.
Mr Castro and Pope Benedict are to meet for talks in the capital, Havana, today, after the Pope visits the figurine of the Virgin of Charity, Cuba’s patron, at a basilica in El Cobre near Santiago. The Pope will celebrate a public Mass in Havana tomorrow morning before his departure.
After years of Church-state hostility following Cuba’s 1959 revolution, Mr Castro has used the Church as an interlocutor on issues such as political prisoners and dissidents, while moving forward with reforms to the island’s struggling Soviet-style economy.
They include slashing a million government jobs and freeing up some sectors to small-scale private enterprise.
Pope Benedict (84) will try to cement those gains and offer more help from the Church in assuring that whatever transition comes is buffered by its social aid. It has supported Mr Castro’s reforms and urged him to move farther and faster in modernising Cuba, both economically and politically.
The Pope got things off to an unexpected start on Friday when he fired a salvo at communism, telling reporters it had failed and a new economic model was needed. He added that the Church was willing to offer its help “to avoid traumas”.
The Cuban government offered a diplomatic response, saying that Cuba would “listen with all respect” to the Pope and welcomed “the exchange of ideas”.
Though weakened after more than half a century of communist rule, the Church remains the largest and most socially influential institution, apart from the government, in Cuba.
Cuban dissidents have requested a meeting with the Pope, but the Vatican has said he has none scheduled.
It was not yet known if Pope Benedict would meet former leader Fidel Castro, who is 85 and Raul’s older brother, or Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez (57), who is in the Cuban capital for cancer treatment.
Mr Chávez has become more publicly religious since he was operated on for cancer last summer in Cuba. – (Reuters)