Las Damas de Blanco (The Ladies in White), a predominantly Catholic human rights group, pose outside a church before a protest march in Havana, ahead of the last Pope’s visit to Cuba in March 2012.
Pope Francis is getting ready for a visit to the Americas, and the first stop is the communist island nation of Cuba.
In an unprecedented step, the authorities there broadcast a four minute address from the pope to the Cuban people.
Speaking in his native Spanish, the Argentine-born pope urged Cubans to accept Christ into their lives.
“That’s a sign of how things are changing,” says the BBC’s man in Havana, Will Grant. “I think it’s a sign that the Cuban government has moved in terms of its religious tolerance towards Catholicism, from the dark old days of the 1970s and ‘80s, when Cuba was an avowedly atheist state, and there was a commitment to atheism in the Constitution and so on. It’s no longer that hard to be Catholic in Cuba. There still might be certain challenges about open religion, but it’s certainly not as hostile as it used to be.”
Pope Francis is describing himself as a missionary for mercy on this trip.
“This particular pope is welcomed by agnostics and atheists in Cuba too,” adds Grant, “because they’re interested in his message on poverty. They’re interested in his message on freedoms more generally. They’re interested too in his message against capitalism. He spoke very openly against ‘savage capitalism’ and ‘worshipping the god of money’ on a recent trip to Bolivia and Ecuador.”
Francis will celebrate a giant Mass in Havana's Revolution Square on Sunday. It's not clear if well-known dissident groups like Las Damas de Blanco (the Ladies in White) will be tolerated.