During five hazardous days on which he officiated four masses gathering approximatety three million attendants and traveled along three thousand kilometers by air and land, Pope John Paul II, seized every moment to set up an affective bond with his followers in the island.

A while back, the Supreme Pontiff never left Rome. John Paul II visits Rome from time-to-time and, in his 19 years of working very hard, he has traveled 27 times around the world -which is two times the distance to the moon- if one take into account that he has made 80 pastoral travels and visited 114 countries. All the previous Popes together have not obtained one percent of this figure. The Vicar of Christ has said, “If I stay in the Vatican as the Curia wanted, I would be in Rome writing an encyclic that would only be read by a few people, but if I travel and get closer to the people, I will know many of hem, common ones as well as political ones, and they will listen to me. Otherwise, they will never come to me.” Common sense, not infallible in popes, sides with Wojtyla. The thousands of millions of Catholics from all over the world cannot travel to Rome to meet him and receive his blessing. He can, thushe does. John Paul II is, for all intents and purposes, a kind of paradigm of the modern tourist who travels with a defined sense of purpose: to spread a faith, to know his fellows, to enjoy contact with other peoples, to speak other languages, to be enriched by the contribution of different cultures, to acquire new knowledge and experiences and to rest, no matter how full his agenda is. The Supreme Pontiffis a kind of prototype of the modern traveler. Being a polyglot allows him to talk easily with men of different cultures, of different peoples. Besides Latin, he fluently speaks German, Russian, French, English, Italian and Spanish. In this unique combination, the personality of the leader of the Catholic Church can be summed up: the dogmatism of the clergy, the universality of a man of culture, the mysticism of those who become aware that they are prophets, and the happiness of those who make traveling a pleasure.

Cuban, friend, the Pope is with you”, said Wojtyla in perfect Spanish in one of the masses celebrated here; each having an special outline and all dominated by the eternal beat of cuban music. In Camagüey he said: “I salute the heat” and made a bunch of people laugh who were also suffocated with temperatures above 30 degrees, “the human heat”, he continued. Cubans, although a little surprised by the new situation of receiving a Pope in the country did not seem confused by this fact at all.”. Pope John Paul II, with unstable pace but smiling, went down the step-ladder of the plane that brought him from Rome slowly and, symbolically kissed the island’s earth that some Cuban children had brought to him. Some time before his arrival, John Paul II had asked the United States to end up the Cuban embargo. Also, he qualified the legendary Cuban-Argentinean guerrilla man Ernesto Che Guevara as a man who liked the poor. At “José Martí” International Airport landing field, the Vatican’s head of state received the salutations of the Cuban president, Fidel Castro. January 22nd started and the Vatican convinced the falsehood of a supposedly verbal aggression made by the pope against the Cuban revolution in his flight from Rome. The incident proved to be irrelevant and the pontiff stepped on a plane of Cubana Airlines to go to Santa Clara, a province 300 kilometers from Havana, to officiate his first mass in Cuban territory. When the mass began, which was transmitted simultaneously by the Cuban state TV station, Karol Wojtyla made a call before 100 thousand people in a city inhabited by 210 thousand, for Cubans Catholics to protect their families as an indispensable resource to protect the nation. By exposing a cautious but in many aspects direct homily, the sovereign pontiff said that family, school and church should from an educational community. In his liturgy, Karol Wojtyla attacked abortion, which he considers a criminal act, and other practices that, according to him, have eroded family relations in the island. The musical compositions especially made for the occasion which excited automatic movements in men and women who seem to carry the rhythm in their blood. That night, Wojtyla returned to Havana to meet in private, second time in his life, with Fidel Castro. They walked slowly having a nice conversation to a saloon at the Revolution Palace were they historically celebrated their second official meeting. On January 23rd, third day of the visit, the pontiff went to Camagüey, 600 kilometers from Havana, and indirectly condemned the US embargo against Cuba emphasizing that it only hurts the poor. In a more specific message sent to Cuban youth, he praised their cultural capacities, for the “sincere passion they put in what interests them and the easiness with which they overcome limitations and adversities. “Go back to your Cuban and Christian roots”, he encouraged people, “to build a freer and more worthwhile future”. On the 25th, the last day of the visit, Pope John Paul II, smiling and visibly tired, was accompanied to the airport by President Castro in a friendly and quiet ceremony that presented the ceremony as a total success for both heads of state. In this happy ending, the Pope left behind any cautious augurs of what this visit, visibly and widely supported by Castro, means. In an unexpected display, Castro authorized simultaneous transmissions of every mass celebrated; in Santa Clara, Camagüey, Santiago de Cuba and Havana. “I am leaving in peace”, said the Pope in his last mass in Cuba, what really seems to be true. Whatever the consequences (immediate or mediate) of the pope’s visit may be, it is indubitable that it opens a new stage in state-church relations. Sooner or later, time will have the last word.

TRAVELS THROUGH THE CARIBBEAN BY POPE JOHN PAUL II

• 25 enero 1979 llega a Santo Domingo. • 26 enero 1979 llega a Ciudad de México. • 30 junio 1980 viaja a Brasil. • 9 marzo 198l llega a Haití. • 11 octubre 1984 llega a Santo Domingo. • 12 octubre 1984 viaja a Puerto Rico. • 25 enero 1985 llega a Ve- nezuela. • 1 julio 1986 visita a Colombia. • 7 julio 1986 acude a Santa Lucía. • 6 mayo 1990 viaja a México. • 13 mayo 1990 realiza una escala en Curacao. • 9 octubre 1992 llega a Santo Domingo. • 11 agosto 1993 visita Jamaica. • 12 agosto 1993 visita Mérida, México. • 5 febrero 1996 llega a Venezuela. • 1 octubre 1997 llega a Río de Janeiro, Brasil. • Jan. 25, 1979: Arrival in Santo Domingo. • Jan. 26, 1979: Arrival in Mexico City. • Jun. 30, 1980: Visit to Brazil. • Mar. 9, 1983: Arrival in Haiti. • Oct. 11, 1984: Arrival in Puerto Rico. • Jan. 25, 1985: Arrival in Venezuela. • Jul. 1st, 1986: Visit to Colombia. • Jul. 7, 1986: Arrival in Santa Lucia. • May 6, 1990: Arrival in Mexico. • May 13, 1990: Stop at Curacao. • Oct. 9, 1992: Arrival in Santo Domingo. • Aug. 11, 1993: Visit to Jamaica. • Aug. 12, 1993: Visit to Merida, Mexico. • Feb. 5, 1996: Arrival in Venezuela. • Oct. 1st, 1997: Arrival in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.