Scottish Catholic Observer

On the second day of his visit to Cuba, Pope Benedict XVI has prayed to the nation’s patron, the Virgin of Charity.

Earlier today, the Pope spent several minutes, his eyes opened and his hands clasped, kneeling before the statue of the Virgin of Charity of Cobre in the village of El Cobre, near Santiago de Cuba.

In a brief speech at the sanctuary, the Holy Father (above being welcomed to Cuba by President Raul Castro) expressed concern for prisoners and the large Cuban disapora in South Florida and elsewhere, who he said are in his thoughts.

“I have entrusted to the Mother of God the future of your country, advancing along the ways of renewal and hope, for the greater good of all Cubans,” he said. “I have also prayed to the Virgin for the needs of those who suffer, of those who are deprived of freedom, those who are separated from their loved ones or who are undergoing times of difficulty.”

The Pope pointedly referred to the icon by her popular name, La Virgen Mambisa, in a gesture to the many non-Catholics on the island who nonetheless venerate the statue as an Afro-Cuban deity. Mambisa is the word for the Cuban fighters who won independence from Spain at the turn of the last century.

After visiting the shrine, the Pope is scheduled to fly to Havana to meet with President Raul Castro and possibly Fidel Castro, though that meeting has not yet been confirmed. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who is in Havana undergoing radiation therapy for cancer, did not ask for an audience but would be welcome to attend Mass in the capital’s Revolution Square tomorrow, a Vatican spokesman said.

Pope Benedict’s trip to Cuba comes 14 years after Blessed Pope John Paul II’s historic tour, when the Polish Holy Father, who helped bring down communism in his homeland, admonished Fidel Castro to free prisoners of conscience, end abortion and let the Catholic Church take its place in the Communist society.