by Carol Glatz

Pope Benedict XVI meets with Cuba’s former President Fidel Castro at the apostolic nunciature in Havana March 28.

VATICAN CITY (CNS) – The Vatican spokesman praised Cuba’s decision to accept Pope Benedict XVI’s request to make Good Friday a national holiday this year.
“It is certainly a very positive sign,” Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesman, said April 1.

Good Friday, the commemoration of Jesus’ passion and death, falls on April 6 this year.

During the pope’s private meeting with Cuban President Raul Castro in Havana March 27, the pope asked for further freedoms for the Catholic Church in the communist nation, including the declaration of Good Friday as a holiday.

The Cuban government accepted the proposal March 31 after the pope’s March 29 return to the Vatican.

Father Lombardi said the Vatican hopes that the holiday will enable people to attend religious services and have “happy Easter celebrations.”

The Vatican hopes Pope Benedict’s March 26-28 visit to Cuba “continues to bring the desired fruits for the good of the church and all Cubans,” the spokesman added.

Only Good Friday 2012 has been made a public holiday; the government hasn’t decided whether it will become a permanent celebration, news reports said.

Blessed John Paul II’s trip to Cuba in 1998 led to Cuba recognizing Christmas as a recurring public holiday.

Though the Church estimates 60-70% of Cubans are Catholic, Church officials estimate that only about 2.5% of Cuba’s population of 11 million can be considered practicing Catholics today, a fraction of the proportion prior to the revolution, though it represents a significant rise since Pope John Paul’s visit 14 years ago.

Meeting with Raul Castro
Pope Benedict spent more than 40 minutes meeting privately with Cuban President Raul Castro. During that meeting, he also asked the Cuban leader for further freedoms for the Catholic Church in Cuba and attention to certain “humanitarian” situations.

Father Lombardi told reporters that while he could not give the press details about the humanitarian cases raised during the meeting, the pope did give Castro specific names of people in detention or suffering for other reasons the government was in a position to help alleviate.

The spokesman said the pope expressed his pleasure at how church-state relations had improved over the last 14 years and expressed his hope for “further developments” so that the Church could increase its contributions to Cuban society.

While not giving reporters a specific list of requests beyond the Good Friday holiday, Father Lombardi said that “if the pope says the church wants to act for the good of society, it means he hopes the church can express itself in additional ways,” including by running schools and hospitals and having greater access to the media.

“The pope, like every Catholic, is asking for a chance to give our best” for the good of society, he said.

The private meeting was the third encounter between Pope Benedict and Castro in Cuba; the president welcomed the pope at the airport in Santiago de Cuba March 26 and greeted him briefly at the end of the pope’s Mass there.

After their private meeting, the pope and president exchanged official gifts. Castro gave Pope Benedict a wooden sculpture of Cuba’s patroness, Our Lady of Charity of El Cobre, and the pope gave the president a replica of a 15th-century atlas that has an annex featuring the newly discovered Americas.

The meeting took place in the Palace of the Revolution, a building housing the president’s office, the Cabinet offices and the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba.

Castro, 80, has served as Cuba’s president since 2008 when his older brother, Fidel, now 85, resigned for health reasons.

While the pope met privately with the president, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, Vatican secretary of state, and other Vatican officials met with Castro’s vice president and other government ministers.

The pope had arrived in Havana at noon from Santiago de Cuba, where he celebrated Mass March 26 and prayed before an image of Our Lady of Charity of El Cobre.

Pope Benedict’s arrival at Havana’s Jose Marti International Airport was a low-key, informal affair, since the formal welcoming ceremony was held in Santiago de Cuba the previous day.

Havana Cardinal Jaime Ortega Alamino greeted the pope, a troupe of young ballet dancers performed and a youth orchestra played.  A small group of people – perhaps 100 – were allowed to stand outside by the terminal to welcome the pope. Wearing white T-shirts and baseball caps, they chanted “Benedicto, amigo, Cuba esta contigo” (“Benedict, friend, Cuba is with you”).

Pope Benedict XVI and Cuba’s President Raul Castro gesture to the media as they appear for a photo opportunity outside the Palace of the Revolution in Havana March 27.

by Francis X. Rocca

Pope Benedict XVI walks with Cuba’s President Raul Castro after the pope arrived in Santiago de Cuba from Mexico March 26.

SANTIAGO DE CUBA, Cuba (CNS) – Celebrating an outdoor Mass on his first day in Cuba, Pope Benedict XVI acknowledged the struggles of the country’s Catholics after half a century of communism and described human freedom as a necessity for both salvation and social justice.
The pope spoke March 26 in Antonio Maceo Revolution Square, in Cuba’s second-largest city. He had arrived in the country a few hours earlier, after spending three days in Mexico.
The Vatican had said the square would hold 200,000 people and it was full; several thousand also filled the streets leading to the square. Cuban President Raul Castro, who welcomed the pope at the airport, sat in the front row for Mass.
Tens of thousands of those at the Mass were wearing white T-shirts welcoming the pope as the “pilgrim of charity”; many wore baseball caps to protect them from the hot sun.
Before the pope arrived in the popemobile, the original statue of Our Lady of Charity of El Cobre, Cuba’s patroness, was driven atop a white truck through the cheering crowd. The statue then was enthroned near the papal altar.
In his homily, Pope Benedict recognized the “effort, daring and self-sacrifice” required of Cuban Catholics “in the concrete circumstances of your country and at this moment in history.” Though now more tolerant of religious practice than in earlier decades, the communist state continues to prevent the construction of new churches and strictly limits Catholic access to state media.
In a possible allusion to reports that the regime had prevented political opponents from attending the Mass, Pope Benedict extended his customary mention of those absent for reasons of age or health to include people who, “for other motives, are not able to join us.”
The pope painted a dire picture of a society without faith.
“When God is set aside, the world becomes an inhospitable place for man,” he said. “Apart from God, we are alienated from ourselves and are hurled into the void.
“Obedience to God is what opens the doors of the world to the truth, to salvation,” the pope said. “Redemption is always this process of the lifting up of the human will to full communion with the divine will.”
Taking his theme from the day’s liturgical feast of the Annunciation, when Mary learned that she would conceive and bear the Son of God, the pope emphasized that fulfillment of the divine plan involved Mary’s free acceptance of her role.
“Our God, coming into the world, wished to depend on the free consent of one of his creatures,” Pope Benedict said. “It is touching to see how God not only respects human freedom: He almost seems to require it.”
The most specific advice in the pope’s homily regarded a topic familiar to his listeners in the prosperous capitalist countries of Western Europe and North America: the sanctity of the “family founded on matrimony” as the “fundamental cell of society and an authentic domestic church.”
“You, dear husbands and wives, are called to be, especially for your children, a real and visible sign of the love of Christ for the church,” Pope Benedict said. “Cuba needs the witness of your fidelity, your unity, your capacity to welcome human life, especially that of the weakest and most needy.”
According to the Center for Demographic Studies at the University of Havana, Cuba’s divorce rate has almost tripled in four decades, rising from 22 divorces per 100 marriages in 1970 to 64 in 2009. The country’s parliament is scheduled later this year to consider the legal recognition of same-sex marriage, in response to a campaign led by Mariela Castro, daughter of President Raul Castro.
Despite his challenges to Cuban society, Pope Benedict concluded his homily by repeating an earlier call for patience with the Catholic Church’s policy of dialogue and cooperation with the communist regime, a process initiated by Blessed John Paul II during his 1998 visit to Cuba.
“May we accept with patience and faith whatever opposition may come,” the pope said. “Armed with peace, forgiveness and understanding … strive to build a renewed and open society, a better society, one more worthy of humanity, and which better reflects the goodness of God.”
A 30-year-old woman in a baseball cap who identified herself only as Xichel told Catholic News Service she and about 100 others traveled about 165 miles from Camaguey for the Mass, and she hoped to see the pope in Havana. Older pilgrims traveled by train or bus, she said.
“I came to see the pope because I am Catholic and he is the successor of Peter, who was the first pope,” she said, adding that she saw Blessed John Paul in Camaguey in 1998.
She also expressed pride that a member of her parish was to read the second reading.
After the first reading, hundreds of people began leaving the Mass. Unlike large-scale papal Masses in other cities, this one had no Jumbotron screens and, to many, the pope looked like a small figure on the distant altar. Many who had been praying and singing seemed not to focus on the homily and began chatting or moving about.

Pope Benedict XVI arrives in the popemobile to Antonio Maceo Revolution Square for an outdoor Mass in Santiago de Cuba, Cuba, March 26.