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By ANITA SNOW
.c The Associated Press
HAVANA (AP) -
Echoing the call of President Fidel Castro, Cuba's communist youth organization
told its members Sunday that attending Pope John Paul II's Mass during his
upcoming visit was a patriotic duty.
"We are going to attend, we will be alongside Fidel in the Plaza and
with the people in all the sites the pope tours,'' a front-page editorial in the
weekly newspaper Juventud Rebelde said, referring to the Jan. 25 Mass to be held
in the vast Plaza of the Revolution.
The editorial, signed by the Union of Young Communists, the party's national
youth wing, said Cuba's youth will attend the Masses "with the calm and
interest with which we have assumed other important and sacred missions of the
fatherland.''
At the plaza, where the final papal Mass will be celebrated, workers on
Saturday placed tiles for an eight-story mosaic of the Sacred Heart of Jesus
behind a dove-shaped altar.
The new image of Jesus faces a huge statue of nationalist Jose Marti and is
at an angle to a famous icon of revolutionary Ernesto "Che'' Guevara.
Astounded passers-by stopped to view the scene emerging in the square where
Castro historically has addressed hundreds of thousands of communist adherents.
"Who would have ever believed this?'' said Maritza Blanco, who sat on
her motor scooter with her 8-year-old daughter on her lap. "Not even a year
ago!''
A year ago, too, it's likely few would have believed the editorial in
Sunday's newspaper.
It all appears to be part of a major Communist Party campaign to draw huge
crowds to the papal Masses, a drive kicked off by Castro's televised appeal
Saturday.
Castro portrayed the papal visit as a test for Cuba's socialist system and
an example to the world of religious tolerance in a country that abandoned
official atheism six years ago.
Until recently, state media had given sparse coverage to the papal visit,
which begins Wednesday. But state radio and pro-government newspapers are now
devoting extensive coverage to it.
Castro promised that the climactic Jan. 25 Mass will be televised live
nationally, but indicated that other papal events will be televised only
regionally, and possibly delayed.
Officials have argued that not all events can be televised live because Cuba
television normally transmits only in the afternoon to save oil used in power
generation. The island suffers routine power outages due to fuel shortages.
Posters promoting the papal visit became far more numerous in the capital
Sunday, appearing even on street lamps and on a few government buildings - which
had previously been off-limits for papal publicity.
But the new official encouragement apparently caught off-guard some party
activists, who had long been trained to mistrust the church.
On Saturday, party activists in the Vibora neighborhood of the capital
trailed Catholic faithful who were putting up posters and defaced or ripped down
many of the signs, residents said.
Pieces of the ripped-down posters were still visible on telephone poles in
the area on Sunday.
"We had understood from (Castro's) speech that we could put the posters
anywhere,'' said the Rev. Santiago Ruiz of the Sacred Heart of Jesus Church. "But
they told us that we could not put them on public property.''
Local party authorities could not be reached for comment. Government
officials characterized the incident as minor, emphasizing the huge effort the
government is making to ensure that the papal visit is successful.
AP-NY-01-18-98 2244EST |