Pope meets Fidel and Raul Castro after mass on Havana square

After decades of hostility between Castro’s communist regime and the Catholic Church, relations began to slowly improve in the 1980s, culminating in a historic visit to Cuba by pope John Paul II in 1998.

With the pope arriving in the USA on Tuesday, a CBS News/New York Times poll finds 79 percent of American Catholics approve of his direction for the church. Castro presented the pontiff with a huge sculpture of the crucified Christ made of oars by the artist Kcho and a painting of the Virgin of Charity of Cobre, Cuba’s patron saint.

Right now, Pope Francis is traveling across Cuba.

Pope Francis met with former Cuban leader Fidel Castro on Sunday, during day two of his first visit to the Communist nation.

After the mass, Pope Francis issued an appeal for peace in Colombia, where an armed conflict between the government and a rebel group has dragged on for over 50 years.

Pope Francis passes in front of a billboard with images of Cuba’s former leader, Fidel Castro, (left) and Cuban independence hero Jose Marti in Havana, Cuba, on Saturday.

Around 30-40 dissidents were prevented from attending the mass on Sunday, including the members of the opposition group “Ladies in White”. Raul Castro gave Francis “composition” built from the oars of migrant boats, a gift “inspired by Francis’ great attention to the plight of migrants”, Lombardi said.

HAVANA – Pope Francis celebrated mass with tens of thousands of Cubans on Sunday in Havana’s Revolution Square, the political heart of Cuba, where the government stages its biggest rallies.

Francis is a bridge builder, something he asks others to be, as well as peacemaker, both qualities on display during his current stay in Cuba.

People cheer as Pope Francis arrives at Revolution Square in Havana on September 20, 2015.

“I think the Pope will back up the Cuban bishops”, said Wenski, “and encourage some more proactive and perhaps fearless steps forward”. “All of us are called by virtue of our Christian vocation to that service which truly serves, and to help one another not to be tempted by a “service” which is really “self-serving”, the pope said.

Castro’s wife, children and grandchildren also attended the meeting on a day when his brother, Cuban president Raúl Castro, met with the pontiff and earlier the pope declared the normalization of relations between the United States and Cuba a model of reconciliation for the world.