Pope Francis meets with Fidel Castro during first-ever Cuba trip

Three dissidents opposed to Cuba’s communist regime have been arrested as they approached Pope Francis shouting ‘Freedom!’ as he arrived to deliver mass at Revolution Square in Havana.

To welcome the pope, a similarly giant poster of Jesus Christ was hung nearby.

Some waited in the square from 3am.

With Pope Francis visiting the United States this week, Central Texas Catholic residents are on holy high alert.

Francis, the first Latin American pope, played a key role as the US and Cuba worked to restore diplomatic relations for the first time in more than 50 years.

Police have detained between 10 and 20 dissidents to stop them from attending papal events and a similar number were threatened or warned, Elizardo Sanchez, head of the Cuban Commission of Human Rights and National Reconciliation, said on Saturday.

“We need to be careful not to be tempted by another kind of service, a “service” which is “self-serving”, he said.

Pope Francis visits Cuba and celebrates mass at Havana’s Revolution Plaza attracting hundreds of thousands of people, both Catholics and non-Catholics, on Sunday.

Castro gave him a copy of “Fidel and Religion”, a 1985 book of interviews with a Brazilian priest which lifted a taboo on speaking about religion in Cuba, then officially atheist.

Pope Francis began his trip from Cuba to the United States this Saturday.

Pope Francis said Sunday that the peace process now being negotiated between the Colombian government and the rebels could not fail again.

That bore fruit with a prisoner swap, the opening of embassies, and an easing of some travel and trade restrictions, although a half-century-old economic embargo is still in place, only removable by the U.S. Congress.

In his remarks, Francis gave a friendly greeting to Fidel Castro, asking his brother Raul to send the 89-year-old revolutionary “my sentiments of particular respect and consideration”.

“He’s different from any of the Popes we have ever had before”. He said that the decision to not release any images had been taken during the discussions with Cuban authorities to set up the meeting.

“May the blood shed by thousands of innocent people during long decades of armed conflict… sustain all the efforts being made, including those on this lovely island, to achieve definitive reconciliation”, he said.

Francisco was expected to visit retired leader Fidel Castro, 89, later on Sunday.

Miriam Leiva and Martha Beatriz Roque, two dissidents on the Communist-run island, each said they were stopped separately by state security agents before they could reach the cathedral.