Search for authentic freedom, Pope urges Cubans

The Pope ended a historic visit to Cuba with a meeting with its ailing former leader Fidel Castro yesterday (Wednesday) after celebrating Mass in front of hundreds of thousands of Cubans gathered in Havana's Revolution Plaza.

The 84-year-old Pontiff used his sermon to gently prod Communist authorities to embrace change and encourage Cubans to search for "authentic freedom" as he ended his three-day visit.

Crowds had filled Havana's main square overnight, the sprawling plaza surrounded by 10-storey high images of revolutionary heroes Ernesto "Che" Guevara and Camilo Cienfuegos and where Fidel Castro used to deliver marathon speeches of fiery rhetoric.

The Pope, who began his 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 co-operation between church and state.

With President Raul Castro, who took over from his elder brother four years ago, seated in the front row, the pontiff urged the nation to open up to reforms and denounced "irrationality and fanaticism", which many will interpret as a thinly veiled attack on Cuba's leadership. "Cuba and the world need change, but this will occur only if each one is in a position to seek the truth and chooses the way of love, sowing reconciliation and fraternity," the Pope said in his homily.

His visit has ignited criticism from opposition within Cuba itself with reports that hundreds of dissidents had been thrown in jail or placed under house arrest in the run-up to Papal tour.