Pope Francis left Cuba today for his first trip to the US, wrapping up a four-day visit to the communist island with an appeal to the people to rediscover their Catholic heritage and live a "revolution of tenderness."
Francis spoke at Mass at Cuba's holiest shrine, with President Raul Castro attending. His choice of words carried particular weight in a country whose 1959 revolution installed an atheist, communist government that sought to replace the church as the guiding force in people's live.
Around midday, he left for Washington for a visit in which he will meet with President Barack Obama, address Congress and the United Nations and take part in a Vatican-sponsored conference on families in Philadelphia.
The pontiff's homily in the Sanctuary of the Virgin of Charity of El Cobre was the latest in a series of carefully worded critiques of the Cuban system during his four-day visit.
At his Sunday Mass in Havana, he urged thousands of Cubans to serve one another and not an ideology. He also encouraged them to refrain from "looking to one side or the other to see what our neighbor is doing or not doing," words that resonated in a nation where the government controls most aspects of life.
Some 10 percent of Cubans regularly celebrate Mass, and the church has been trying to seize on the softening of the Cuban system under Raul Castro to rekindle the country's religious heritage.
"Generation after generation, day after day, we are asked to renew our faith," the pope said Tuesday. "We are asked to live the revolution of tenderness as Mary, our Mother of Charity, did."
The pope spoke in the foothills of the Sierra Maestra mountains where Castro and his brother Fidel commanded a guerrilla army that swept through the country and seized power in 1959.
After decades of official hostility to the church, the government has been gradually giving it space to operate in recent years, handing it back churches to reopen and allowing priests to run education programs and extensive outreach to the poor, sick and elderly.
As a result, Francis has been carefully balancing his desire to work with Castro's government on its path of internal reform and detente with the United States with his longstanding critiques of communism as a system that stifles the spirit.
