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Bogota Mayor:
Castro's Health Declining
Yahoo! News.
BOGOTA, Colombia, 14 (AP) - Weeks after
meeting with Fidel Castro during a vacation
in Cuba, Bogota's mayor said Wednesday the
77-year-old Cuban leader's health appeared
to be deteriorating.
"He seemed very sick to me,"
Luis Eduardo Garzon, a former communist
union organizer, told Caracol Radio. "You
could tell he had physical limitations,
especially in his speech."
Rumors about Castro's health circulate
regularly, especially in the Cuban exile
community. But he has not had any known
serious illnesses and remains energetic
for a man his age, recently speaking for
eight hours at a meeting of Cuba's parliament.
Garzon, who met with Castro in December
before taking office Jan. 1, said Cuba has
made significant advances in the fields
of education and health but that he was
disappointed with the revolution there.
"One expects debate ... but in Cuba,
everything is driven and controlled by one
party," Garzon said. "That's not
right. I have always said there should be
no dictatorships, neither from the left
nor the right."
Castro has been in power for 45 years,
making him the world's longest-ruling head
of government.
Garzon took office with a pledge to combat
poverty in the capital city of 7 million.
He has vowed to oppose some of hardline
President Alvaro Uribe's more controversial
tactics in the government's campaign to
crush a leftist, four-decade rebel insurgency.
Leader of Orthodox Christians Goes to Cuba
By ANDREA RODRIGUEZ, Associated Press Writer
HAVANA, 14 - The spiritual leader of the
world's 300 million Orthodox Christians
will travel to Cuba next week at the invitation
of President Fidel Castro to consecrate
a cathedral, a regional church leader said
Wednesday.
Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew will arrive
on Jan. 21 and consecrate the cathedral
on Jan. 25, said Metropolitan Athenagoras
of Panama and Central America, which includes
Mexico, the Caribbean, Colombia and Venezuela.
"Our church is very old, the oldest
in all of Christianity, and we bring a message
of peace," Athenagoras told The Associated
Press. "For us, it is an honor to be
in Cuba."
Cuba was explicitly atheist for about 25
years after Castro's revolution, but the
collapse of the Soviet Bloc led the government
to abandon official atheism and to openly,
if warily, accept religious faith.
In recent years, Bartholomew has visited
Libya, Iran, Bahrain and Qatar - the first
ever by an Ecumenical Patriarch to those
Muslim countries - to promote religious
tolerance.
The St. Nicholas Cathedral was constructed
with Cuban government funds on one side
of the Byzantine-style Basilica of San Francisco,
a former Roman Catholic sanctuary now used
mostly for concerts.
"This cathedral is an offering, as
the president says in his letter to the
patriarch," Athenagoras said.
There are some 1,200 practicing Orthodox
Christians in Cuba and the church hopes
to bring another 500 back into the fold,
especially immigrants from countries of
the former Soviet Union and eastern Europe.
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