Pope, Castro Set Meeting For Next January In Cuba

Pope John Paul II plans to meet with Fidel Castro during his first visit to Cuba, the only nation in Latin America that the well-traveled pope has never visited.

According to an official report out of Cuba on Friday, John Paul will visit Jan. 21-25.

The Prensa Latina news agency said the pope’s agenda includes discussions with church leaders and other Roman Catholic faithful, in addition to the meeting with Cuba’s president, Fidel Castro. The report cited the Communist daily Granma.

Castro has met once with the pope. That meeting, on Nov. 19, paved the way for next year’s visit.

Cuba’s ruling Communist Party is officially atheist, but in recent years it has eased its restrictions on religious observances.

The church, too, has been less vocally anti-communist than in the early years after Castro’s 1959 revolution. Then, as the government closed church schools, the church helped children flee Cuba.

The pope is widely seen as a moral force around which opponents of Communist rule rallied in his native Poland, helping hasten the collapse of the Soviet Bloc - which devastated Cuba’s economy.