AP WAS THERE: Pope John Paul II arrives in Cuba

On Jan. 21, 1998, Pope John Paul II became the first Catholic pontiff to visit Cuba, and more than 20 AP writers, editors, photographers and TV staffers arrived to cover the historic visit.

Welcomed by President Fidel Castro and multitudes of Cuba's hard-pressed but hopeful people, Pope John Paul II began a historic pilgrimage Wednesday to this island of embattled faith and struggling revolution.

The pope told the crowd at Havana's airport he was praying that Cuba would become a land of "freedom, mutual trust, social justice and lasting peace."

"May Cuba, with all its magnificent potential, open itself up to the world, and may the world open itself up to Cuba," he declared in an arrival statement.

[...] he firmly endorsed what he called the "legitimate desires" of the Roman Catholic Church in Cuba — its quest for more privileges under Castro's communist government.

Communist party workers joined church volunteers in tacking the pope's portrait to palm trees, telephone poles and even the backs of bicycle cabs across town.

In an instant, Havana had become a city of startling contrasts — starkest of all the scene at the hallowed Plaza of the Revolution, where the papal procession route passed towering rival images of Christ and of revolutionary hero Che Guevara.

The route also wound past signs of the economic decay omnipresent in Havana after years of revolutionary government and U.S. antagonism — peeling pastel facades, crumbling roadways, fleets of bicycles and decrepit sedans from the 1950s.

[...] strengthening the Cuban church may be the most realistic goal of the papal visit, first discussed by the Vatican and Havana in 1979 but long postponed because of its political sensitivity.

Castro has loosened some strictures on the church since the early 1990s, but Catholic leaders want still more "space" — more access to the public media, more freedom to import foreign priests, perhaps eventually even a restoration of some Catholic education.