Pope Francis with Raul Castro on September 20, 2015 in Havana. “We need to talk to each other”, Charon Moulton told 22News.
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Pope Francis also met with Fidel Castro’s brother Raul, who, perhaps jokingly, said he likes the Pope so much he is thinking of returning to his Catholic roots.
Pope Francis will be the first pontiff to ever address a joint session of Congress. At Sunday’s meeting, Francis gave Castro several books, including one from a Jesuit who was once Castro’s teacher.
Later on Sunday, the Pope held a rally with young people, enjoying improvising and telling jokes in Spanish, their common native language.
Francis called on Castro after celebrating Mass in Havana’s main plaza on his first full day in Cuba.
The huge plaza is where Cubans celebrate May Day beneath massive portraits of revolutionary leaders Ernesto “Che” Guevara and Camilo Cienfuegos built into the facades of government buildings.
Pope Francis, who has been credited with assisting in a thaw in U.S.-Cuban relations, is scheduled to begin his trip to the United States on Tuesday. During the service, Francis called on the people of Cuba to serve each other and not an ideology, in a subtle slight to the island nation’s communist system.
The meeting, at Castro’s home, came after the pontiff delivered mass to thousands at Havana’s Revolution Square on Sunday morning, Lombardi said.
Ariana carries a picture of Jesus in her wallet and said his visit was very significant.
Francis also appeared to appeal to Cubans to look after each other as the country faces social changes and new economic opportunities. Many people are waiting to hear what he has to say. Security agents had wrestled two men and a woman to the ground at the edge of Revolution Square, then led them off, after they started shouting and tried to hand out flyers, a witness said.
Cuba is an unfree society and the Pope has a duty to remind his hosts that wanting to preserve the social gains of the 1959 revolution is not an excuse for permanently depriving people of their right to choose their government. “When your hopes and goals have been restricted for so many years, it’s hard not to be overcome with the pull to embrace the novelty when faced with the freedom to do so”.
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Now made of concrete, the five-meter (16-foot) landmark has endured through centuries of hurricanes and years of tensions between the Church and the communist regime, which was officially atheist for more than three decades until 1992.
