Castro Urges Respectful Greeting for Pope

Cuban leader Fidel Castro on Saturday called on all Cubans--”Catholics and non-Catholics, believers and nonbelievers”--to line the avenues, pack the plazas and greet Pope John Paul II this week with respect, not politics.

Preparing his 11 million people for the first visit to their island nation by the anti-ommunist pope, scheduled to arrive here Wednesday, Castro asserted that his government and its Communist system are “invincible,” strong enough without political signs and slogans to withstand criticism from any outside visitor--including President Clinton himself.

Castro contrasted the pope, whom he praised as “very kind, very respectful and affectionate,” with Clinton, who has continued a 35-year U.S. trade embargo against Cuba.

“There is no American president that dares to come to this country to see what is going on or to give speeches,” Castro said in a six-hour, nationwide television broadcast that began late Friday.

Then, almost as an afterthought, the Cuban president appeared to invite his U.S. counterpart: “If Mr. Clinton would like to come to Cuba to speak about capitalism, neoliberalism, globalization, democracy, we would not have the slightest objection.”

Asked by a group of foreign journalists after the broadcast whether that was, in fact, an invitation to Clinton, Castro said: “I can’t do it without first speaking to the chief of the White House.”

But Castro’s message to the Cuban nation early Saturday was clear: Critics who expect the pope’s visit to destabilize one of the world’s few remaining Communist states will be disappointed.

“Reactionaries and imperialists who want to liquidate the Cuban revolution want to present the pope as the exterminator angel of socialism, of communism and revolution,” Castro said. Citing John Paul’s criticism of capitalism’s excesses, he added: “The exterminating angel is not pointing toward Cuba, he is pointing toward that.”

The 71-year-old Castro, who led the 1959 revolution that overthrew Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista, spent more than an hour dissecting in detail the differences he sees between Cuba and Poland, where a visit by the Polish pope emboldened the church to help end Communist rule in the 1980s.

But Castro also used the session to announce another concession to Cuba’s Catholic Church, which, in advance of the pope’s visit, has won several new freedoms from a government that discouraged all religion until recent years.

The pope’s three Masses in the cities of Santiago, Camaguey and Santa Clara will be broadcast live on state television in the provinces where they are held, Castro said. And a Havana Mass next Sunday, which is expected to be the centerpiece of the papal visit, will be aired live nationwide.