Havana’s Revolution Square packed ahead of pope’s mass

The Holy Father’s controversial trip to Cuba, comes ahead of a much-anticipated and equally controversial trip to the United States.

Cuban President Raul Castro and Argentine President Cristina Kirchner were already in the stands as Francis arrived, looking smart in his papal whites and surrounded by a security detail dressed in black.

(Ismael Francisco/Cubadebate Via AP).

“For some months now, we have witnessed an event which fills us with hope: the process of normalizing relations between two peoples following years of estrangement”, Francis said in his native Spanish.

Cuban President Raúl Castro greeted the Argentine pope, whose “skullcap flew off in the Caribbean breeze”, notes Reuters.

Vatican officials have said they hope his visit will help bring an end to the 53-year-old U.S. embargo on Cuba.

“The re-establishment of relations has been a first step in the process towards normalisation of the relationship between the two countries, which will require resolving problems and correcting injustices”, he said.

Many are waving Cuban and Vatican flags.

The Obama administration has asked Congress to lift the embargo and in a sign of further progress on the eve of the Pope’s visit the USA government eased up on sanctions on Cuba that permit United States companies to open offices in Cuba and allow greater to travel to the island 90 miles from the US. “He blessed her”, said the girl’s aunt, Maria Teresa Gonzalez, 64, from a church in Matanzas city.

Federico Lombardi says the pontiff presented Castro with a volume written by a Jesuit who taught him at the Catholic school he attended as a child.

It’s made a U.S. Representative, a Catholic even, decide to boycott Francis’s address to Congress, convinced that the pope will not address his preferred concerns.

Cuba, he said, had been a model of internationalism and humanism in past decades.

In a video chat with Cuban students, shown by broadcaster CNN on Friday, the Pope referred to a potentially touchy subject for his Cuban hosts, saying leaders who did not promote other leaders “are no good, they are dictators”.

An estimated 60 per cent of Cuba’s 11 million people are baptised Catholic, the Church says, but fewer than five per cent regularly attend church, and at least an equal number are believed to follow Afro-Cuban religions.

Elizardo Sanchez, head of the Cuban Commission of Human Rights and National Reconciliation, said most of the 30-40 opposition activists rounded up were in Santa Clara and Havana. University students were also recruited to turn out.

Pope Francis waved to onlookers while he passed in front of a billboard with and image of Cuba’s former leader Fidel Castro and Cuban independence hero Jose Marti, outside the airport in Havana.

Pope Francis hailed the restoration of relations between the U.S. and Cuba as a victory for the culture of engagement and dialogue after he landed in Havana for his first visit to the Communist island state. Francis will finish the day with an evening vespers service in the San Cristobal cathedral and meet with Cuban young people.

In what government opponents could see as a criticism of party bureaucracy, he said Jesus’ apostles foolishly argued about their rank and the pope compared it to “those who climb the ladder most quickly to take the jobs which carry certain benefits”. Before celebrating Mass, he passed through the crowd in the popemobile greeting worshippers.

If the Pope stuck to standard Christian theology, I would be the first in line. He will then, like his predecessors, grab the world stage at the United Nations to press his agenda on migration, the environment and religious persecution.