THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: The Pope ended a historic visit to Cuba with a meeting with its ailing former leader Fidel Castro on Wednesday after celebrating Mass in front of hundreds of thousands of Cubans gathered in Havana's Revolution Plaza.
Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi confirmed that the pair had met, for about 30 minutes at the Papal Nuncio's residence in Havana, but he did not detail what they discussed.
The 84-year-old Pontiff used his sermon to gently prod Communist authorities to embrace change and for Cubans to search for "authentic freedom" as he ended a three day visit to the Caribbean nation.
Crowds had filled Havana's main square overnight, the sprawling plaza surrounded by ten-storey high images of revolutionary heroes Ernesto "Che" Guevara and Camilo Cienfuegos where Fidel Castro used to deliver hours long speeches of fiery rhetoric.
The Pope, who began his six-day tour of Mexico and Cuba with an attack on Marxism, asserting that the "ideology as it was conceived no longer corresponds to reality", had made it a theme of his visit to urge increased cooperation between church and state.
With President Raul Castro, who took over from his older brother four years ago, seated in the front row, the pontiff urged the nation to open up to reforms and denounced "irrationality and fanaticism" that many will see as a thinly veiled attack on Cuba's leadership. » | Fiona Govan | Wednesday, March 28, 2012
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