POPE FRANCIS has told the Cuban people that love and service, not ideology, are the keys to their happiness.
“We do not serve ideas, we serve people,” the Pope told hundreds of thousands gathered in Havana’s Revolution Square for Mass.
For decades the square has been the site of major communist government rallies and it is dominated by a huge image of Ernest “Che” Guevara, an Argentine Marxist who became a leader in the Cuban Revolution of the 1950s.
The image of Che was prominent at the Mass, but so was a banner proclaiming Francis a “missionary of mercy” and a bigger image of the merciful Jesus Christ. After decades of communism, Mass attendance in Cuba is low. Only 60 per cent of the population is baptised Catholic.
