In this photo taken Tuesday, September 22, 2015, Pope Francis talks…
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Cuban and American officials acknowledged that Francis had reached out to them via letters, asking the two nations to renew their relationship.
He has already demonstrated this through his actions in December in facilitating the prisoner exchange with the U.S. and opening dialogue between the governments of the two countries still locked in Cold War hostilities.
The FARC guerrillas had wanted to meet with the pope in Havana, but the Vatican made it clear that no such meeting would take place. Obama, his wife Michelle Obama and their daughters shook the pope’s hand on the red carpet.
Pope Francis has said Russian Federation plays a crucial role in solving the world’s problems, a TASS news agency report said.
The Pope also reminded priests that they will find the “least and the littlest” in the confessional and urged confessors not to give penitents “a hard time”, but, rather, “think about your own sins; think that you could be that person”. Although he said their ideology was flat-out wrong, it did not prevent him from identifying and admiring what was good in them. He warned against the throwaway culture that destroys hope and how young people “are thrown away because they are not given work”.
In turn, the US Ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power, publicly condemned Cuba’s alleged imprisonment of human rights activists, dissidents, and homeless people prior to the pontiff’s visit.
Francis has so far spoken in what might be called pope code with regards to Cuban politics. What Cuba requires, said Pope Francis during a homily in Havana, is for leaders to abandon a type of service that is self-serving and founded on ideology.
Before leaving Cuba the Pope thanked the country’s people for their hospitality, saying that he felt a “warmth spread by people who know how to welcome”.
It brings to the surface “some lingering concerns about the sympathy Pope Francis seems to have with more left-leaning movements”, Father Sirico said.
In an interview with Italian television, the Vatican’s Substitute for General Affairs to the Secretary of State, Msgr Angelo Becciu, said of the negotiators: “They came here to the Secretariat to sign the two respective documents in the presence of Cardinal Pietro Parolin who acted nearly as a guarantor of the word they had given each other”.
Latin-American expert Jimmy Burns, author of a new biography on the Pope entitled Francis: Pope of Good Promise, agreed that Francis’s “softly-softly” approach contrasted with pronouncements from both John Paul and Benedict XVI, as well as Francis’ outspoken remarks “on other political issues like global warming, migration, poverty and capitalism”.
SANTIAGO, Cuba (AP) _ Pope Francis has wrapped up his final formal event in Cuba.
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Once an atheist state, how did communist Cuba go from seeing religion as the opiate of the masses to celebrating mass at Revolution Plaza?
