Welcome to Havana, Your Holiness
HE FLEW in, he kissed a tray of Cuban soil, he sat through a warm address of welcome, brief by Fidel Castro's standards if long by any others, he returned compliments, and then John Paul II was down to business: masses in three provincial cities on Thursday, Friday and Saturday, to climax in a vast celebration of mass—all to be televised live, despite official Cuban fears that the power supply would not stand it—in Havana's Revolution Square on Sunday. But what exactly did the pope hope to achieve?
This article appeared in the The Americas section of the print edition under the headline “Welcome to Havana, Your Holiness”
From the January 24th 1998 edition
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