Pope Calls for Freedom of Conscience in Cuba

HAVANA —  In the same plaza where Fidel Castro proclaimed Cuba’s Communist revolution nearly four decades ago, at least 500,000 Cubans cheered, wept or simply listened in awe Sunday as Pope John Paul II called for freedom in the name of Jesus Christ.

At Havana’s biggest open-air Mass since 1959, nuns chanted, the choir cried, and President Castro himself watched in respectful silence from a front-row seat in the audience after his government allowed the visiting pontiff to transform the heart of its atheist revolution into a sprawling church for the masses.

“Liberation,” the pope declared to thundering applause, “cannot be reduced to its social and political aspects. Rather, it reaches its fullness in the exercise of freedom of conscience, which is the basis and foundation of all other human rights.”

But as John Paul ended the last day of a five-day apostolic journey that has overwhelmed this long-isolated nation through his sheer presence and candor, the pope saved his final words for the United States. He blasted Washington’s 35-year trade embargo of Cuba as one of the world’s “oppressive economic measures,” which he deemed “unjust and ethically unacceptable.”

“In our day,” the pontiff proclaimed near the steps of his plane moments before he departed, “no nation can live in isolation.”

For Castro’s part, as he bid a thankful farewell to the pope at the same ceremony, the president likened his nation to “a small David fighting a nuclear-age Goliath.” He reminded his countrymen and the world that each public word and image of the trip had been broadcast live here and abroad.

Cuba, he said, “has nothing to fear, believes in its ideals, defends its principles and has nothing to hide from the world.”

“For the honor of your visit, for all your expressions of affection to the Cubans, for all your words, even those with which I might disagree, in the name of all the Cuban people, your holiness, I thank you.”

It was a balanced end to a well-scripted visit that included 12 papal speeches in four Cuban cities and a 50-minute private meeting with Castro. In closing, the 77-year-old pontiff called them “intense and emotion-filled days with the pilgrim people of God in the beautiful land of Cuba, which has left on me its profound imprint.”

He added: “I take with me the indelible memories of these days and a great confidence in the future of your homeland.”

John Paul also left his mark on a nation and its people, many of whom said they hoped that imprint will be a permanent one.

On a day that included meetings to pledge his support and protection for Cuba’s newly emboldened clergy, as well as visits with leaders of Cuba’s Protestant, Jewish and evangelical communities, the pope left what is likely to be one of the most lasting impressions on the multitude that had waited for hours in the predawn chill at the Plaza of the Revolution to hear him.

Speaking from a grand pulpit beneath a 100-by-65-foot painting of the Sacred Heart of Christ erected for the occasion, the pope drew dozens of rounds of applause, including from the Jesuit-educated Castro.

The 71-year-old Cuban leader, seated in a navy blue suit beside Nobel Prize-winning Colombian novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez, clapped heartily when the pope finally addressed a view the two leaders share.

“Various places are witnessing a resurgence of a certain capitalist neoliberalism, which subordinates the human person to blind market forces and conditions the development of peoples on those forces,” the pontiff declared, sounding much like Castro.

“We thus see a small number of countries growing exceedingly rich at the cost of the increasing impoverishment of a great number of other countries,” the pope added. “As a result, the wealthy grow even wealthier, while the poor grow ever poorer.”

But most of the pontiff’s remarks focused on the need to preserve and expand the freedom and space that Castro gave Cuba’s long-silent Roman Catholic Church in staging this visit--most of which was telecast live on state-run television.

The most intimate and telling exchange Sunday between the pontiff and his audience, which included many atheists and agnostics, came halfway through his homily.

“The pope lives! He wants all of us to be free!” chanted a large group of priests and nuns seated just behind Castro the moment the pope appealed for “freedom of conscience.”

“Yes. Free,” the pontiff ad-libbed, interrupting his own homily. “With the freedom that Christ gave us.”

Then, and each time the pope used the word, muffled chants of “Freedom, freedom, freedom” rippled through isolated pockets in the crowd.

Returning to his text, the pontiff continued: “For many of the political and economic systems operative today, the greatest challenge is still that of combining freedom and social justice, freedom and solidarity, so that no one is relegated to a position of inferiority.”

When the homily ended, and a small army of priests and nuns ventured out to assist with Communion, it was clear that the pope had touched everyone, though some in different ways.

Eduardo Ozores was near tears.

“This is unbelievable. I never in my life thought I would see this day,” said Ozores, a 28-year-old junior high school teacher who was among the hundreds of church faithful staffing crowd barricades side by side with members of revolutionary brigades.

“I think John Paul II has planted a seed in our people. And this seed is going to grow into a victory--a victory of spirit and a victory of freedom,” Ozores said.

“It will take time. And it must be watered, or it will wilt and die. But we are the ones who will water it.”

Juan Gonzalez, 51, is a lifelong atheist and a member of one of the local Revolution Defense Committee brigades that Castro called out to join church workers in organizing Sunday’s security. The message that Gonzalez said he would take away from the plaza was the pontiff’s call “for a good and truthful reconciliation.”

That papal refrain for the reunification of a people divided by geography and ideology appeared to resonate through most of the plaza Sunday--among Cuban residents and the hundreds of exiles who had returned for the pope’s visit, some for the first time in decades.

“Politics has got to take second place to reconciliation,” said Steve Perez, 48, an environmental chemist now living in Tampa, Fla., who returned to Havana with his wife, Maria, for the first time since they were children.

“Cubans, here and there, just want to be human beings. From the pope’s words, I hope that people see how religion can lead to more personal freedom,” Perez said.

Aristides Fernandez of Tampa celebrated his 58th birthday in the plaza Sunday--during his first visit home since 1960.

For Fernandez, the pope’s visit was a new watershed for hope.

“He lived up to his title as pontiff, which in Latin means a builder of bridges,” Fernandez said. “It was a pointed message, directed at Castro, when he called on the state to resolve the problems of religion and the economy. You would have to be blind to miss it.

“I hope that the tradition of the pope’s visit signaling the end of communism works here. And I think there is a chance.”

Carmen Delia Pichardo, 37, was not nearly so certain. The Havana resident said that everyone in her family has left for exile except her father, her daughter and herself.

Pichardo praised the pope’s address as “very good, very hopeful, very courageous.” And she said she would most remember “his request for unity--and that we will have unity through faith and freedom.”

But she added: “All my family is in exile. It is encouraging to think that we could rejoin. But I see it as very far off.”

Eddie Cabrera was one of the few in the crowd who has been living closely with both parts of the Cuban community. At 38, the Havana-born cameraman is one of a new breed of government artists allowed to enter and leave Cuba under creative freedoms the government granted in the late 1980s.

“To me, this is what the Cuban people needed,” he said of John Paul’s homily. “I believe the only ones who can change the course of a people are the people themselves--not Fidel, not the pope, not the United States.

“And now, it’s up to the people.”

Times staff writer Mike Clary and Times researcher Dolly Mascarenas in Havana contributed to this story.