WSJ: HOLGUÍN, Cuba— Pope Francis commiserated with Cuba’s Catholics on Monday about the difficulty of religious life in a communist country but stopped short of any direct criticism of its leaders.
“I know the efforts and the sacrifices being made by the church in Cuba to bring Christ’s word and presence to all, even in the most remote areas,” the pope said, as he celebrated Mass as the first pontiff to visit the central Cuban city of Holguín.
The pope’s relatively mild public complaint came during a trip that has been marked by his cautious stance toward the island’s government.
The previous day in Havana, Pope Francis met Cuban President Raúl Castro and his predecessor and brother Fidel Castro, shortly after dissidents said they had been detained to prevent them from attending a papal Mass.
Other groups of dissidents were also detained on Sunday, including a group that had been invited by the Vatican’s diplomatic mission to greet the pope behind closed doors. The meeting never took place.
Asked on Monday whether Pope Francis knew about a reported 50 arrests of dissidents, Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi said, “I don’t have any information about this.”
Before the visit, the pope came under criticism for his decision to meet with both Raúl and Fidel Castro, but not to meet with any dissidents.
Neither day’s homily contained any strong political statements, though on Monday the pope told a congregation of thousands in Holguín’s Revolution Square that faith in Jesus “pushes us to look beyond, not to be satisfied with the politically correct.”
Cuba is no longer an officially atheistic state, but the Catholic Church and other religious groups here continue to operate under many of the restrictions imposed by the communist government in the years after the 1959 revolution.
Visits by then- Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI, in 1998 and 2012, respectively, led to government concessions including visas for foreign missionaries and the establishment of Christmas and Good Friday as national holidays.
The Catholic Church in Cuba is still generally unable to run schools, build new houses of worship or maintain older ones, and its social-service activity remains limited by a virtual monopoly of the state.
In a speech to President Castro and other dignitaries during an arrival ceremony at Havana’s international airport Saturday, Pope Francis said the Catholic Church in Cuba should have the “freedom, the means and the space needed” to evangelize and provide charitable service to the island’s people.
While the church has publicly pressed its own case in Cuba, it has so far been silent on the lack of political rights and freedoms on the island.
The church has occasionally worked quietly to ease the plight of dissidents. In 2010 and 2011, Havana’s Cardinal Jaime Ortega arranged for the release of more than 100 political prisoners, most of whom then left the country.
The Vatican has said the pope would likely address concerns over religious liberty or the civil rights of dissidents not in public remarks, but rather in private meetings with Mr. Castro and other officials.
Holguín, a city of 1.65 million in the center of the country, is usually overshadowed by Havana and Santiago, the other two cities the pope was scheduled to visit during this trip. The Vatican said the pope added the seven-hour stop there because it had been neglected by John Paul and Benedict when they visited the country.
Small clusters of people greeted the pope’s motorcade on its way in from the airport, and he covered last two miles in an open-sided popemobile. The sweltering heat seemed to take a toll on the 78-year-old pope, who looked and sounded especially fatigued as he celebrated Mass.
The pope was scheduled to fly shortly before 5 p.m. to Santiago, where he was to meet Cuba’s Catholic bishops and pay homage to the country’s patroness, the Virgin of Charity of El Cobre. After less than a day there, he will fly to Washington, the first of three stops on a U.S. tour that ends Sunday in Philadelphia.
*** What you may not know:
Pope Francis arrives in Washington Tuesday to start his first visit to the United States. Here are 10 things you may not know about the religious leader of the world’s 1.2 billion Roman Catholics.
He is fluent in four languages, but English isn’t one of them.
The Argentine pope is fluent in his native Spanish, Italian, German and Latin, the official language of the Vatican. He also has addressed crowds in clear but heavily accented English, French, Portuguese and Ukrainian. In a nod to the growing importance of the U.S. Hispanic population, the pope will celebrate at least one Mass in Spanish during his visit, at the canonization ceremony of California missionary Junípero Serra. He will read his address to Congress in English.
He has a rather unusual resume for a supreme pontiff.
Back when he was still Jorge Mario Bergoglio, the future pope moonlighted as a Buenos Aires bar bouncer and a janitor sweeping floors before joining the Jesuit Order in 1958. As a teenager, Bergoglio got his secondary school diploma as a chemical technician and worked at a food laboratory running tests on nutrients.
He’s a big fan of tango, soccer and “Lord of the Rings.”
Pope Francis has an “intense fondness” for tango dancing and the traditional music of Argentina and Uruguay known as milonga. In 2014, over 3,000 dancers from all over Italy celebrated his birthday by dancing tango in Saint Peter’s Square. A lifelong fan of the Argentine soccer team San Lorenzo, he is number 88,235 on the club’s member list. In 2013 he celebrated the team’s victory by hoisting the trophy over Saint Peter’s Square for the crowd to see. The pope is also a “Lord of the Rings” aficionado. In a 2008 sermon he used the Tolkien characters Frodo and Bilbo as inspiring examples of hope conquering doubt.
Pope Francis has never been to the United States.
Up to now, he has made a point of prioritizing the margins of society over developed countries in the Western world.
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For his first official papal trip outside Rome he went to a Sicilian island to meet migrants who had survived the dangerous ocean crossing from Africa. In his two years as pope he has traveled to Israel, Jordan, the Palestine territories, the Philippines, South Korea and Sri Lanka in addition to several South American countries.
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The designated ‘popemobile’ for the U.S. visit is a Jeep Wrangler.
The Holy Father will be shuttled around the streets of Washington, New York and Philadelphia in a Jeep Wrangler that is already in the hands of the Secret Service, according to the Vatican.
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A similar car with open sides and a glass-front roof was used for the pope’s visit to Ecuador in July. This layout will give the surrounding crowds a clear view of the pontiff, unlike the closed and bulletproof “popemobiles” of his predecessors.
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The pope’s aircraft is nicknamed ‘Shepherd One.’
Typically the pope flies in an ordinary chartered jet operated by Italy’s national carrier, Alitalia. Although the pope owns no special airplane, Americans nicknamed the chartered papal flight “Shepherd One” when Pope Benedict XVI visited the U.S. in 2008.
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According to traditional protocol, when a pope travels abroad he flies out on the Alitalia chartered jet and returns to Rome on a flag carrier of the visited nation, although this depends on where he goes.
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The 266th pope likes being out on the streets.
Pope Francis is famously unpretentious. A few examples: He was spotted popping out of the Vatican in his Ford Focus to buy new glasses at an optician’s shop in Rome. During his recent visit to Bolivia, he stopped at a Burger King to change his clothing before saying Mass. He’s the first pope to wander down into the cafeteria to eat lunch with Vatican employees. He’s also the first pope to carry his own luggage onto the plane.
Pope Francis has prioritized climate change and environmental issues.
He criticized those who deny the human connection to climate change in a strongly worded 184-page encyclical, “Laudato Si,” issued in June. He wrote that the modern “use and throwaway” culture and the “disordered desire to consume more than what is really necessary” is to blame for global warming.
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“Never have we so hurt and mistreated our common home as we have in the last 200 years,” he wrote. The encyclical was sharply criticized by many as inappropriate meddling by a religious institution in a political issue. He is expected to address climate change during his U.S. visit.
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The pope (no longer) wears Prada.
While predecessor Benedict XVI was known for wearing the customary bright red shoes rumored to be designed by Italian fashion house Prada, Francis prefers to stick to the same simple black leather shoes from his days as archbishop of Buenos Aires.
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He also prefers humbler papal garments, doing away with the velvet capes, fur trim, elaborate crucifixes and gold rings of the office.
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He is the first pope from the developing world.
The Buenos Aires native of Italian ancestry is the first pontiff to come from the developing world, the first pope from the Americas, and the first non-European pope since Syrian Gregory III in 741. He is also the first Jesuit pope.
