Pope praises Cuban-US rapprochement

The 78-year-old Pope Francis was greeted in Cuba on Saturday by crowds waving flags and holding banners with the message: "Missionary of mercy, welcome to Cuba!"

The pope was given a military guard of honor and children handed him flowers.

The improved relations between the United States and Cuba were a key theme in his speech at the airport.

"I urge political leaders to persevere on this path and to develop all its potentialities ... on behalf of the peace and well-being of their peoples, of all America, and as an example of reconciliation for the entire world," Francis said.

The Argentine-born pontiff had facilitated talks between the Washington and Havana last year. The discussions led to a prisoner exchange, the reopening of embassies and the easing of some travel and trade restrictions. A continuing US economic embargo can only be removed by a vote in the US Congress.

Cuban President Raul Castro thanked Pope Francis for his help with the US talks. In his welcoming speech on Saturday the Cuban leader criticized the ongoing US embargo and occupation of the Guantanamo naval base on the eastern tip of the Caribbean island.

Castro said Cuba had been a model of internationalism and humanism for decades.

"We have done that while being blockaded, insulted, attacked, with a high cost in human lives and major economic damages," he said.

Catholics in Cuba

Cuba's ruling Communist Party has relaxed restrictions on Catholics in recent years and Pope Francis encouraged continuation of the policy "so that the Church can continue to support and encourage the Cuban people in its hopes and concerns, with the freedom, the means and the space needed to bring the proclamation of the kingdom to the existential peripheries of society," the pontiff said.

An estimated 60 percent of Cuba's 11 million people have been baptized Catholic, but fewer than 5 percent regularly attend services, according to the church.

Francis will celebrate mass in Revolution Square in Havana on Sunday. He flies on to the United States on Tuesday to meet President Barack Obama and to address both the US Congress and the United Nations.

jm/sms (Reuters, AP)