Castro, pope to meet next week

HAVANA - Their portraits are plastered throughout Old Havana - two septuagenarian exporters of revolution, crowd-loving orators and tireless propagators of rival creeds, poised for a long-awaited encounter.

The official government picture on walls and popular T-shirts shows Pope John Paul II clasping hands with his expectant host, President Fidel Castro. Another picture, distributed by the Roman Catholic Church, features only the pope and heralds his coming as "the messenger of truth and hope."

John Paul's arrival next week for a five-day pilgrimage across Cuba marks a historic overlap of interests between his activist, globe-trotting papacy, now in its 20th year, and Castro's impoverished Communist regime, struggling into its 40th.

But the contrasting posters reflect their diverging expectations of the visit, which will include a private meeting between the two men and four outdoor Masses in four cities, ending with a nationally televised Sunday liturgy in Havana's Plaza of the Revolution with Castro present.

The Cuban leader is welcoming John Paul as a fellow head of state, hoping his moral clout will deliver Cuba quickly from its punishing isolation by the United States. The pope is looking beyond the present to the day Castro, now 71, will be gone from the picture.

Vatican officials say John Paul is coming to shore up Cuba's Catholic Church so it can play a strong, moderating role in a bloodless transition from Castro's one-man rule and to preach reconciliation between Communists here and anti-Castro exiles abroad.

To foster those long-term aims, the world's most effective anti-communist missionary has decided, at age 77, to engage the most charismatic of communist holdouts mano a mano in a high-profile dialogue that offers Castro two immediate benefits - legitimacy on the world stage and a repudiation of the U.S. trade embargo against his island nation.

"The success of the pope's visit should be the nation's success, a success of the revolution," Castro told Cuba's lawmaking National Assembly of People's Power last month.

"The pope is going to Cuba not to weaken the regime but to strengthen the church, and Castro knows it," a Vatican official said. "Officially, this is a pastoral mission."

But he added: "Whatever additional space the pope can open for the church there will have a far-reaching political impact. Freedom has a tendency to expand."

Few events since Castro's rise to power in January 1959 have carried as much potential to open the island to democratic influences, many church officials believe. The pope is one of Castro's most prestigious visitors ever, and his church is the largest institution in Cuba not under state control.

Several hundred Cuban Americans plan to come to hear John Paul - the biggest return of exiles for a single occasion during Castro's rule. Accompanied by six cardinals and two dozen bishops from the United States, they expect to join the largest crowds assembled here in four decades for a religious demonstration.

The pilgrimage is a pointed challenge to Washington because it highlights long-standing opposition to the United States' 36-year-old embargo by the pope and by U.S. and Cuban bishops. The Clinton administration has voiced private reservations to the Vatican about the visit while saying little in public.

Cuba's Catholic leaders are declaring the Jan. 21-25 visit a tentative success on the basis of hard-won concessions from Castro for the occasion.

He declared Christmas an official day off last month, 28 years after making it a work day. He gave the church space in state-run media and permitted a series of unprecedented outdoor Masses to publicize the pilgrimage. His government has agreed to bus worshipers to the papal Masses.

Of crucial importance for the church's health, he has agreed to let in dozens of foreign priests and nuns to rejuvenate the small, aging corps working on the island.

01-12-98