Castro wants Pope to visit Cuba, cardinal says

ROME (Reuters) – Cuban President Fidel Castro wants Pope
Benedict to make a visit to his country, an Italian cardinal
has said.

Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone of Genoa, who visited Cuba in
October and met Castro, told the Italian Catholic business
magazine “Il Consulente Re” that Castro told him he was
impressed by Benedict, who was elected last April.

“I recognized in him the face of an angel, the face of a
very good person. I would like to invite him to Cuba,” Bertone
quoted Castro as telling him.

According to the monthly magazine, published on Tuesday,
Castro asked Bertone to help arrange a visit. Benedict’s
predecessor John Paul made a historic visit to communist Cuba
in 1998 and held mass in Havana’s Revolution Square.

The Vatican embassy in Havana said no formal invitation had
been made by Cuba requesting another papal visit.

“During that meeting with the Cardinal, there were real
showings of esteem for Pope Benedict,” Papal Nuncio Monsignor
Luigi Bonazzi told Reuters.

In a rare meeting, Castro dined with the hierarchy of
Cuba’s Roman Catholic Church on Nov 16 to mark 70 years of
unbroken diplomatic relations between Havana and the Vatican.

Ties remained intact even though hundreds of priests were
expelled after Castro took power in a 1959 revolution and Cuba
became an atheist state.

Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Cuban
government abandoned official atheism and allowed religious
believers to join the ruling Communist Party a decade ago.

(Additional reporting by Anthony Boadle in Havana)