Farewell to His Holiness Pope John Paul II at the conclusion of his visit to Cuba, José Martí International Airport, Havana, January 25, 1998

Speech by Commander Fidel Castro at the farewell ceremony for His Holiness John Paul II, held at the José Martí International Airport

Holiness:

I think we have set a good example for the world: you, visiting what some called the last bastion of communism;

us, receiving the religious leader to whom they wanted to attribute the responsibility of having destroyed socialism in Europe. 

There was no shortage of those who foreshadowed apocalyptic events.

Some even dreamed of it.

It was cruelly unfair that his pastoral journey was associated with the narrow hope of destroying the noble objectives and the independence of a small country blocked and subjected to a true economic war for almost 40 years. 

Cuba, Your Holiness, today faces the most powerful power in history, like a new David, a thousand times smaller, who, with the same slingshot as in Biblical times, fights to survive against a gigantic Goliath of the nuclear age that is trying to impede our development and give up due to disease and hunger. 

If that story had not been written then, it would have been written today.

This monstrous crime cannot be ignored or excused.

Holiness:

Whenever I hear or read the slanders against my country and my people, concocted by those who worship no other God than gold, I always remember the Christians of ancient Rome, so atrociously slandered, as I already expressed on the day of their arrival, and that slander has been many times in history the great justifier of the worst crimes against the people.

I also remember the Jews exterminated by the Nazis, or the 4 million Vietnamese who died under napalm, chemical weapons and explosives.

Being a Christian, being a Jew or being a communist did not give anyone the right to exterminate them.

Thousands of journalists transmitted to billions of people around the world every detail of his visit and every word he spoke.

Countless nationals and foreigners were interviewed throughout the country.

Our national television networks transmitted to our people, live and direct, all the masses, homilies and speeches. 

Perhaps never have so many opinions and news about such a small nation been heard, in such a short time, by so many people on our planet.

Cuba does not know fear;

despise lies;

listen respectfully;

believe in their ideas;

he unshakably defends his principles and has nothing to hide from the world.

I am moved by the effort that His Holiness makes for a more just world.

States will disappear;

the peoples will come to constitute a single human family.

If the globalization of solidarity that you proclaim extends to the entire Earth and the abundant goods that man can produce with his talent and his work are distributed equally among all the human beings who inhabit the planet today, a world could really be created for they, without hunger or poverty;

without oppression or exploitation;

without humiliation or contempt;

without injustices or inequalities, where living with full moral and material dignity, in true freedom, that would be the most just world!

His ideas on evangelization and ecumenism would not be in contradiction with him.

For the honor of your visit, for all your expressions of affection for Cubans, for all your words, even those with which I may disagree, on behalf of all the people of Cuba, Your Holiness, I thank you

(applause) .

(SHORTHAND VERSIONS - COUNCIL OF STATE)

During the mass offered in the Plaza de la Revolución José Martí, Havana, January 25, 1998

Talks with His Holiness Pope John Paul II.

Havana, January 25, 1998

Converses with His Holiness Pope John Paul II at the conclusion of the mass offered in the Plaza de la Revolución José Martí, Havana, January 25, 1998