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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Pope Denounces U.S. Embargo Of Cuba He Urges Young People Not To Flee Their Land For Material Gains

Molly Moore Washington Post

Pope John Paul II on Friday issued his first direct criticism of the nearly 36-year U.S. trade embargo against Cuba since arriving here, a denunciation that - in the eyes of President Fidel Castro - more than compensates for the pontiff’s pointed rebukes of his host government.

In a written message to Cuba’s youth distributed after his Mass in the eastern city of Camaguey, the pope disparaged “the effects of economic embargoes, which are always deplorable because they hurt the most needy,” a statement welcomed by Castro in his battle to change U.S. policy.

But in an apparent reference to post-Castro Cuba, the pope also urged the country’s young people not to flee their land in search of material gains or a better life, but rather to remain in Cuba and “make a responsible commitment to your families … and, when the time comes, to the future direction of the nation.”

The pope’s double-edged message was indicative of the first three days of his five-day Cuban visit, in which he and Castro have engaged in a political waltz unlike any public performance this nation has witnessed in nearly four decades.

Castro appeared unexpectedly with the pope at the University of Havana Friday night. After greeting the pope at the entrance to the university, where Castro himself studied, the president took a seat in the front row of the audience and listened to the pontiff’s remarks to a gathering of cultural figures.

The pope, one of the few dissenting voices allowed on government-controlled television since Castro’s Communist regime took power in 1959, has used every Pope in public address to castigate aspects of the Cuban government. Just as extraordinary, his admonitions have been greeted without criticism or comment from Castro or his Communist Party, much to the dismay of some government hard-liners.

But even as he attacks Castro’s policies, the Vatican leader has dedicated equal time to espousing many of the complaints Castro has voiced against the outside world - economic isolation by the United States, the effects of rampant consumerism imported from capitalist nations and the evils of a promiscuous society.

“It is risky to allow the pope to speak freely and with full coverage, to voluntarily allow a foreigner of the stature of the pope to compete with him,” said Jose Miguel Vivanco, executive director of the Washington-based Human Rights Watch/Americas.

“But he has been trying to portray his mission as very close to what the message of the pope is. He has been trying to emphasize not the differences but the points in which they have common views, specifically the embargo and social justice.”

Cuban government television - the only television broadcasts received in Cuba outside the tourist hotels, to which few Cubans have access - has avoided any commentary on the pope’s statements, instead describing the history of the Catholic Church and the purpose of various items used in its religious services.

“There’s an imbalance,” said Felix Arbizu, a reporter for Granma, the Communist Party daily. “The pope criticizes the education system, and there was no response.”

The Cuban government “realizes that whatever they say that is publicly confrontational could lead to a situation in which they have no control,” Vivanco said. “The strategy is to pretend they are not receiving criticism and to highlight the points they have in common.”

While government television aired the Mass on Thursday, Granma carried a front-page story about it Friday that made no mention of the pontiff’s sharp criticism of a government education system that bars private and religious schools and requires most high school students to attend workstudy schools in the countryside separated from their families.

Even as he issues unblunted criticisms, the pope has dispensed dozens of missives that echo Castro’s own public pronouncements. The pope’s condemnation on Thursday of Cuba’s high divorce and abortion rates could have been taken from the texts of Castro speeches and party propaganda. In Friday’s Mass, directed at Cuba’s youth, the pontiff said too many young people “idealize things from other countries, they allow themselves to be seduced by unchecked materialism, they lose their own roots and long for distractions.”

Many of John Paul’s statements here were hardly unexpected. But in Cuba, where views other than those of Castro and the Communist leadership are not publicly disseminated, even common requests take on new meaning.

“In a country where for almost 40 years the media have never showed anybody who had a different perspective, to say there’s another man who might speak differently is very important,” one government critic said. “And putting him on TV live is more important than in other countries.”