Pope meets with Fidel, misses out on dissident greeting

Holguin – On Monday, Pope Francis celebrated Mass in the Eastern Cuba city of Holguin becoming the first Pope to visit the city where the Castro brothers and leaders of Cuba, Fidel and Raul, grew up.

Former Cuban President Fidel Castro (R) writes in a book as Pope Francis (L) and Castro’s wife Dalia Soto del Valle look on in Havana, Cuba, September 20, 2015.

(Vatican Radio) Pope Francis Monday continued his visit to Cuba, by celebrating Mass in Holguìn’s Revolution Square which was attended by some 150,000 people, before continuing on to Santiago.

Francis is now the third pope to visit the island, after his predecessor Benedict XVI traveled there in 2012 – a remarkable amount of papal attention for a country where only 10 percent of the population describe themselves as Catholic. Also, two well-known Cuban dissidents said agents detained them after the Vatican invited them to the pope’s vespers service at Havana’s cathedral.

In his first two days in Havana, the pope met with both Castro brothers.

“The government of Cuba is finally showing signs of intelligence and recognizing it has committed many errors, as much in the area of religion as in the politics between the United States and Cuba”, he said.

Three Cuban dissidents were arrested Sunday as they approached Francis shouting “Freedom!” when he arrived for mass in his popemobile. Francis issued a personal appeal to Presidents Barack Obama and Raul Castro last year to end 50 years of animosity, and later hosted the Cuban and US delegations to finalize the deal.

The pope then held a mass service in which he emphasized the importance of serving people and not ideas.

The mass was attended by Argentine President Cristina Fernandez, personally invited by Raul Castro, as well as by hundreds of invitees from the high echelons of the socialist government and tens of thousands of church-goers and curious people, who arrived at the square hours in advance.

While in D.C. the Archbishop says the pope will address some important themes.

Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi told journalists that Vatican officials had in fact been in contact with some dissidents, but that they had not managed to arrange a meeting.

Francis praised the détente between the two long-estranged neighbors as “an example of reconciliation for the entire world” that “fills us with hope”.

Were these the words many here had hoped this Latin American pope, brought up in the more liberal Jesuit wing of the church, would speak against Cuba’s Communist regime?

The message comes at a delicate time of change in Cuba as the communist country negotiates normalization of ties with its longtime foe, the United States, and undertakes modest free-market reforms that have opened some sectors of the economy to private enterprise while keeping large-scale enterprise in state hands.