Pope Plans Long-Awaited Visit to Cuba

Pope John Paul II will make a long-awaited pastoral visit to Cuba later this year, the Vatican announced Sunday.

The announcement triggered speculation in the papal party, not confirmed by the Vatican, that Cuba became an added starter to the Pope’s crowded 1990 travel schedule to take advantage of international momentum for democratic change begun with the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe.

The pontiff, who repeatedly applauded what he called East Europe’s return to “freedom’s road” on his two-day Czechoslovak visit, had not been expected to travel to Cuba until some time in 1991.

Meeting with reporters while the Pope celebrated Mass here, his spokesman, Joaquin Navarro, said that the visit will come before Christmas and probably will last five or six days. Navarro said that John Paul was formally invited to make the visit by Cuba’s Roman Catholic bishops and by the Cuban government.

The Polish-born John Paul is applauded throughout Eastern Europe as a symbol of the human rights struggle and an important catalyst for change.

Fidel Castro, Cuba’s Marxist president, has adamantly rejected perestroika in the Soviet Union that has made change possible in East Europe, but of late, he has muted a longstanding antagonism toward religion.

Precise dates and details for the Cuba trip are still being worked out, Navarro said, but the Vatican expects that the pontiff will arrive in Havana around Dec. 9. He is expected to travel throughout the country, visiting each of the seven Cuban dioceses.

If he follows his usual pattern, the Pope will also meet privately with Castro, with Cuban intellectuals, with the diplomatic corps and with leaders of other churches.

Under Communist rule since 1959, Cuba is the largest Roman Catholic country and the last major Western Hemisphere country that has yet to be host to a visit from John Paul.

The 69-year-old John Paul, in the 11th year of his papacy, usually makes four foreign trips each year. The addition of Cuba makes six for 1990.

In January, the Pope visited five Sahel countries in West Africa. After his Czechoslovakia visit, he will begin a new round of visits to Latin American countries in Mexico on May 6. At the end of May, he goes to Malta, and in September he returns to Africa, before completing his busiest travel year with the Cuban visit.