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Havana is anxiously awaiting Francis, who is seen as something of a hero for helping prod the United States and Cuba to keep moving forward toward normal relations.
‘For some months now, we have witnessed an event which fills us with hope: the process of normalising relations between two peoples following years of estrangement, ‘ he said in a speech delivered on the tarmac.
Meanwhile, Pope Francis urged the United States and Cuba to persevere with their rapproachment – setting “an example of reconciliation for the entire world“.
Landmark speeches to the US Congress and the UN General Assembly await next week on the 78-year-old Argentine’s first trip to a global superpower whose policies he has never hesitated to criticise.
The United States announced on Friday new measures to relax restrictions on travel and trade with Cuba, to ease an embargo that has remained in place for more than half a century. “They have tortured and imprisoned thousands of dissidents”.
Pope Francis played a crucial role in thawing the relationship between the two countries when he personally appealed to President Barack Obama and Cuban leader Raúl Castro previous year and hosted delegations from each country to discuss rapprochement. “We have done that while being blockaded, insulted, attacked, with a high cost in human lives and major economic damages”.
The Catholic Church, long identified with Cuba’s wealthier citizens, took a vehemently anti-communist line shortly before Fidel Castro declared the country to be socialist in 1961.
Raul Castro even told the Jesuit Francis earlier this year he may start praying again and return to the Church. “The Cuban government is convinced that this visit will be an extraordinary event, for which it has worked fluidly, harmoniously with the Vatican state, the Havana Nuncio and the Cuban Catholic Church“. Smarrelli said he hopes to hear how the pope views the Catholic population in the United States and what he thinks American Catholics should be doing.
For Sunday’s mass, Cuban authorities have hung a giant banner of Jesus Christ from the national library which overlooks Revolution Square.
Pope Francis has arrived in Cuba on his first visit to the island.
Having helped bring the US-Cuba rapprochement, he is unlikely to wade much further into the future of relations where a web of legislation, vested interests, and decades-old resentments are braking the pace of change.
At first they stirred interest from state security agents who showed up with inquiries, she said, especially after a crowd of pilgrims once carried a large cross through her neighbourhood in eastern Havana. “It’s preventive police repression”, he said.
“I’m going in with the mindset that it’s a pilgrimage”, Longoria said of the journey to Philadelphia.
The papal spokesman, Monsignor Federico Lombardi, said there were more than 100,000 people lining Francis’ route from the airport.
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“I’m a devout “Santero” – the Church is for old people!” laughed Eduardo Gutierrez, 19, sitting with his girlfriend on Havana’s languid seafront.
