Pope Benedict XVI met Wednesday with Cuban revolutionary icon Fidel Castro after calling for change on the Communist-led island at a mass celebrated before a joyous crowd of some 500,000 people.
The pontiff was wrapping up his trip to Cuba, the first papal visit in 14 years, aimed at bolstering the Church's ties with authorities in Havana, and to encourage new and renewed faith in the mainly secular island nation.
Shortly after celebrating mass before the throng in Revolution Square, Benedict -- leader of the world's 1.2 billion Roman Catholics -- met with the 85-year-old Castro for about 30 minutes, a Vatican spokesman said.
The aging revolutionary leader, clad in a dark track suit and plaid shirt, and with his physician son Antonio steadying him, asked the pope about issues such as liturgical changes and a pope's responsibilities in a changing world, the spokesman added.
"I am old, but I still can do my duty," Castro was quoted as joking.
Video of the meeting by a government blogger showed Castro also introducing his wife, Dalia Soto del Valle, and four of their sons to the 84-year-old pontiff.
The polite chat apparently steered clear of the pontiff's gentle but persistent prodding of Communist authorities to embrace change.
"Cuba and the world need change, but this will occur only if each one is in a position to seek the truth and chooses the way of love, sowing reconciliation and fraternity," the pontiff told the crowd including President Raul Castro, Fidel's brother.
"The truth is a desire of the human person, the search for which always supposes the exercise of authentic freedom," he said, as hundreds of nuns cheered and chanted in a sea of waving Vatican yellow and Cuban blue, white and red flags. Cuba's president, 80, was seated front and center.
Hailing the government's granting of freedom of religion since 1998, Benedict said Cubans' quests for truth generally should also respect "the inviolable dignity of the human person."
His comment appeared to be an oblique reference to dissidents pressing for political opening in the Americas' only one-party, Communist-ruled country. Dozens were rounded up and arrested during the pope's visit, dissident sources said.
Human rights groups such as the Cuban Commission on Human Rights and National Reconciliation have had their phone lines cut since Monday. The cell phones of prominent activists were also unreachable, Amnesty International said.
The pope scheduled no meeting with dissident leaders, in a big disappointment for them.
Last week, Benedict said Marxism "no longer corresponds to reality," and argued Cuba could be helped by looking at new models. But a dialogue about political and economic opening can be challenging here because of starkly different ideas about what freedom and democracy mean.
Cuba's leadership dreads the idea of joining the global economy, which it sees as corrupt and unjust. The top-down economy is subsidized and propped up by socialist Venezuela, a key regional ally.
The Cuban government also insists democracy already exists, and sees the papal visit as a way of showing the world it is tolerant of religious expression.
The pontiff's calls for openness prompted Vice President Marino Murillo to rule out any political opening.
"In Cuba, there will be no political reforms," Murillo, who is in charge of carrying out the economic reform program ordered over the past few years by the president, told reporters on Tuesday.
Catholics account for some 10 percent of Cuba's population of about 11 million. The country was officially atheist for almost four decades until 1998.
The church nonetheless has emerged as the most important non-state actor in Cuba, even mediating the release of prisoners.
Fidel Castro met with the late Pope John Paul II on two occasions, in Cuba in 1998 and at the Vatican in 1996.
After John Paul II's 1998 visit, expectations ran high that the charismatic Polish pontiff might help spark change.
But more than a decade later, Cuba remains isolated and its state-run economy feeble, with most workers eking out a living on $20 a month.
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