Pope and Castro Meet on Goals, Differences

The leader of one of the world’s last Communist states met privately Thursday night with the pope who helped drive Marxism from much of the globe, just hours after Pope John Paul II told Fidel Castro’s nation: “No ideology can replace [the] infinite wisdom and power” of Jesus Christ.

Meeting for the second time in 14 months, after the pontiff had attacked communism on national television here as a force that has eroded basic moral values, two of the towering figures of the 20th century sat just 6 feet apart to discuss shared goals and sharp differences--the clash between an ideology and a theology that has changed the course of nations.

Setting the stage for the 50-minute meeting between these two aging leaders, Castro, clad in a dark suit and tie, gently ushered the white-robed pontiff down a red carpet, past a wall of photographers into the inner sanctum of one of communism’s few remaining strongholds, the Council of State headquarters in central Havana.

The Jesuit-educated Castro, 71, had said their meeting in the Palace of the Revolution would be an encounter between “two angels, who are friends of the poor.” The 77-year-old pontiff had called it a conversation between “two men.” Cuban and Vatican officials said neither side would disclose what took place inside.

But as the pope ended the first full day of his self-described “apostolic journey” through Cuba, he already had spoken forcefully and passionately to Cuba’s people and--through them--to its leader.

Pronouncing his first public homily in Cuba from the island’s geographic center, John Paul launched a central theme that he had said he would discuss with Castro face-to-face later in the day. His speech was a firm, sometimes harsh critique of decaying morality in a nation where the promotion of science through an entire generation of Communist rule has left Christian family values in tatters.

The first of John Paul’s four homilies, delivered in Santa Clara, reached millions of Cubans through an unprecedented live national broadcast of his Mass on state television--a major government concession to Cuba’s newly empowered Roman Catholic Church.

Abortion, the pope declared, is “an abominable crime” that has spread “under the guise of freedom and progress” in a country that has one of the highest abortion rates.

A senior Cuban health official later said that abortion, while legal, is not encouraged, adding that an intensive government campaign has reduced the rate from 1.5 abortions for each live birth in 1986 to a third of that last year.

The pope also spoke of the sanctity of Christian marriage--and “its character as an exclusive and permanent union”--to a nation where many have been married at least two or three times.

And he criticized a Cuban government policy that sends teenagers to the countryside for high school, separating them from their families. That policy, he said, combined with emigration of Cuban youth abroad, has helped spawn teenage promiscuity in a nation where prostitution abounds--that too despite government efforts to curb it. “The path to overcoming these evils is none other than Jesus Christ,” John Paul declared.

He then urged Castro’s government to reopen Cuba’s religious schools, which were shut soon after Castro’s 1959 revolution under government policies designed to discourage all religion.

John Paul acknowledged the state’s role in educating its youth in a nation where the entire population can read and write. But, to the applause of the crowd in Santa Clara, he added, “This does not give public authority the right to take the place of parents.”

“The family, the school and the church must form an educational community in which the children of Cuba can grow in humanity,” he said. “Do not be afraid. Open your families and schools to the values of the gospel of Jesus Christ.”

Castro decided to close those schools three years after he led the revolution that overthrew Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista, when his government’s tough policies on religion drove into exile many of the white, wealthy Cubans who were the church’s base. The Cuban state also seized church land in 1961, declared Cuba an atheist state and expelled Catholic priests.

Later Thursday, Vatican officials said they had asked the Cuban government for an “act of clemency” for several specific prisoners on humanitarian grounds--a standard request on papal trips. Cuban officials promised to give the request “great attention,” the Vatican said.

Castro last met the pope in November 1996--a 35-minute meeting that paved the way for this week’s papal journey. Diplomats say that if that session between the two in the Vatican library in Rome was a guide, Castro probably did most of the talking when the two met again as darkness fell in the Cuban capital.

But a senior Cuban official said Thursday’s meeting was “much more cordial than the one in the Vatican. Even though there are discrepancies, it is not necessary to fight about it.”

Describing that earlier meeting, one diplomat who was at the Vatican that day said, “The Holy Father listened very patiently. Only at the very end did he reply, and only to correct some inaccuracies in Castro’s statements. Then Castro became very timid. Without saying much, John Paul controlled the whole meeting.”

In the months since, Castro has been prodding papal aides to tell him what the pope is like. “I’m not sure whether Castro’s rapprochement with the church is for real, but his interest in John Paul, the man, certainly is,” Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls, who has met often with the Cuban leader, said last month. “Castro keeps asking me, ‘What does the pope think? What does he read?’ ”

Throughout Castro’s tens of thousands of words in public appearances just before the pope’s arrival, he never mentioned whether he planned to discuss his own religious beliefs with the pope. Asked bluntly by reporters 10 days ago whether he believes in God, Castro shot back: “Are you priests? Are you confessors? What are you?

“I don’t accept those types of confessions,” the Communist leader finally said. “I respect all beliefs. I respect all that believe, and I respect the ones that do not believe. . . . That is the duty of a politician.”

But he stressed that neither he nor the pope--who is credited with speeding the fall of communism in the Soviet Bloc--would attempt to convert the other at their meeting.

After the private meeting between the two leaders, Navarro-Valls later told reporters, Castro’s family joined him and the pope for an informal, 10-minute session. It included Castro’s two brothers--Raul, 66, Cuba’s second-in-command, and Ramon, 76--and two of the Cuban leader’s four sisters, both of whom are practicing Catholics. Raul Castro’s wife, Vilma, was also present.

During that meeting, Navarro-Valls said, Ramon Castro told John Paul: “Holy father, my sister has always wanted to embrace the pope the way we’ve seen people do on TV when they visit the Vatican.”

“Let’s do it,” the pope replied.

* LEARNING ABOUT POPE: Many Cubans at papal Mass only recently gained an idea of pope’s role. A16

* L.A. REACTION: Locally, Cuban Americans debate the effect the visit could have on their homeland. B3