Pope Francis and Cuba’s Fidel Castro shake hands, in Havana
Pope Francis was flying to eastern Cuba yesterday for the next leg of his pilgrimage after having met with both Raul and Fidel Castro but missing out on an encounter with Cuban dissidents.
The Vatican stressed that no official meeting had been planned with the dissidents. The Vatican embassy in Havana did make calls to some leaders “as a sign of attention to these people,” the Vatican spokesman said, but in the end the dissidents were prevented from reaching the cathedral where the greeting was planned.
The Castro meetings went off without a hitch.
The Vatican described the 40-minute session with Fidel Castro at the former president’s home as “informal and familial,” with an exchange of books and discussion about big issues facing humanity, including Francis’ recent encyclical on the environment and the global economic system.
Video of the encounter broadcast on Cuban state media showed the 89-year-old Castro chatting animatedly with Francis and shaking the pope’s hand, the pope standing in his white vestments and Castro sitting in a white button-down shirt and Adidas sweat top.
The meeting brought together the leader who shaped Cuba for the last half of the 20th century and Latin America’s first pope, who is credited by many Cubans with opening a path to the future by mediating the warming diplomatic relations between their country and the United States. After his Cuba visit, the pope flies to Washington for his first ever trip to the U.S.
Francis called on Castro after celebrating Mass in Havana’s main plaza on his first full day in Cuba.
In his homily delivered under the gaze of a metal portrait of revolutionary fighter Che Guevara, Francis urged Cubans to care for one another out of a sense of service, not ideology. He encouraged them to refrain from judging each other by “looking to one side or the other to see what our neighbor is doing or not doing.”
“Whoever wishes to be great must serve others, not be served by others,” he said. “Service is never ideological, for we do not serve ideas, we serve people.”
It was a subtle jab at the communist system, which even the Vatican spokesman didn’t deny. “The pope doesn’t tend to make explicitly political speeches, but he has some general principles and everyone is free apply their different experiences of life on them,” the Rev. Federico Lombardi said.
At one point, Francis was approached by a man who grabbed onto the popemobile and appeared to be speaking emotionally to the pontiff, who touched him on his hand and head before he was pulled away by security agents. Video showed what appeared to be the same man throwing leaflets in the air, and backers of a Cuban dissident group said on Twitter he was a member of the opposition.
The head of the opposition group Ladies in White said 22 of 24 members of her group who wanted to attend Mass were prevented from going by Cuban security agents. And two other well-known Cuban dissidents said agents detained them after the Vatican invited them to the pope’s vespers service at Havana’s cathedral. Nicole Winfield and Michael Weissenstein, Havana, AP
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