Castro Not Afraid Of Pope But Some Hope Visit Will Be Dawn Of Freedom

Cuban officials are almost eager to insist that Pope John Paul II’s journey to Cuba this week is not likely to improve 38 years of hostile relations with the United States.

And they ridicule suggestions that the pontiff’s five-day visit will produce changes on this socialist island.

“Many people have tried to politicize the visit and use it against the revolution,” President Fidel Castro complained in a weekend television appearance.

Carlos Fernandez de Cossio, head of the U.S. section of the Cuban Foreign Ministry, told The Associated Press that the pope’s visit “has nothing to do with the bilateral conflict that Cuba has with the United States.”

Some Cuban exiles in the United States - and even White House officials - have suggested the pope, scheduled to arrive Wednesday, might somehow inspire changes in Cuba.

“There could in fact be positive results in having the Holy Father in Cuba able to talk about the importance the world attaches to human rights and to the need for relief of the suffering,” White House spokesman Mike McCurry said last week.

“And that discussion itself might empower those who believe there can be change and might even touch the heart of Fidel Castro,” he said.

During his television appearance, Castro himself said many people think “the pope is coming to Cuba to meet with that demon Castro in the last bastion of communism, and the hope is that this will be the end of the Cuban revolution.”

But he said that since the end of the Cold War, the pope himself has become a consistent critic of capitalist societies, casting John Paul as a man whose concerns about poverty and inequality often mirror those of socialists.

Cuban officials also note that the pope agrees with their criticism of the U.S. trade embargo against Cuba.

Insisting he has nothing to fear from any papal statements, Castro said that even Clinton was free to visit Cuba “to speak of capitalism, neo-liberalism, globalization.”

“We would not raise the least objection. … Let him try to convince us!”

Still, some are holding out hope that the papal visit will spawn growing contacts between Cuba and U.S. business and church groups.

“There could very well be a new era dawning,” said John S. Kavulich II, head of the U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council in New York, which includes a number of major U.S. companies.

In Spain, a cardinal who is to accompany the pope to Cuba said the trip could prove to be the beginning of Castro’s demise.

“What happened with the Berlin Wall and what happened in Poland could happen” in Cuba, the Spanish daily ABC quoted Archbishop Ricard Maria Carles of Barcelona as saying.

While John Paul’s stopover could demonstrate to Americans that their government’s Cuba policy has isolated the United States, Fernandez de Cossio was skeptical the trip would affect U.S. public opinion, let alone policy.