By JUAN O. TAMAYO
Herald Staff Writer
VATICAN CITY -- To cries of ``Free Cuba,'' Pope John Paul II on Wednesday blessed an image of Cuba's patron saint painted in prison by a dissident and brought to Rome by Miami exiles on ``a pilgrimage of pain.''
``I pray for Cuba every day,'' the pontiff told the 81-year-old woman who held the image just hours before Cuban President Fidel Castro was to arrive for a U.N. summit and a probable audience with the pope.
But John Paul made no direct reference to Cuba during his weekly general audience for 6,000 people, a fact Vatican sources chalked up to the exiles' lack of preparation for their visit rather than politics. Some 60 exiles from the Miami area have been in Rome since Tuesday on a ``pilgrimage of pain of the Cuban people,'' designed to raise the issue of Cuba as the pontiff prepares for his first meeting with Castro.
``As the victimizer of Cuba comes to Rome, we want to raise this image of our patron saint as a banner for his victims,'' said the Rev. Francisco Santana, deputy director of the Our Lady of Charity shrine in Miami.
The image is a painting of the Virgin Mary on a prison bedsheet, done by an inmate in Havana's Combinado del Este prison, Joaquin Alejandro Fuerte, who is serving a nine-year sentence for enemy propaganda.
More than 90 other political prisoners signed the image or wrote prayers along its borders, and the cloth was smuggled out of the prison and delivered to Santana in September.
Accompanying the image as symbols of Cubans' suffering were relatives of the four people killed in February when Cuban jets downed two Miami-based airplanes; a survivor of the 1994 incident in which Cuban boats rammed and sank a hijacked tugboat, drown ing 41 people; and Mario Chanes de Armas, who served 30 years in a Cuban prison.
``We are here as a sign of our faith in the Virgin Mary and our wishes for a life in liberty and democracy,'' Chanes said. Uncertain applause rose from the public at the general audience, especially a large group from Poland's Solidarity Movement, as the Cuban exiles walked into the huge auditorium behind an unfurled Cuban flag.
``I saw the Cuban flag and asked myself if you were `our' Cubans or `their' Cubans,'' said Rep. E. Clay Shaw, a Florida Republican attending the Rome summit of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization.
The exiles broke into the Cuban National Anthem and shouted ``Viva Cuba Libre'' and ``We want a free Cuba'' when the pontiff noted their presence in the hall, but the pope made no public comment on the situation in Cuba. Vatican sources say the pope on ly comments on specific pilgrim groups and their issues at his general audiences when they are accompanied by bishops or other officials of their local churches.
Santana's mother, Dalia, who uses a wheelchair, draped the bedsheet image over herself as she was taken up to the pope, along with about 20 other sick people, to receive special blessings at the end of the audience.
``I asked him to pray for Cuba and he said, `I pray for Cuba every day,' '' the 81-year-old woman said afterward, barely able to talk from the emotion and the crush of Miami and Italian journalists around her. She also asked the pope when he will vis it Cuba -- John Paul's first visit to the island is expected sometime next year -- ``but he only smiled.''
Sympathetic Italian media
The usually liberal Italian media have been surprisingly kind to the Miami exiles, with one article comparing them to an ``exile version of Polish Solidarity'' and a TV talk show host saying they are opposing Castro's ``gulag.''
About 70 Italian journalists turned up later for a Chanes news conference and a showing of two documentaries on the human rights situation in Cuba.
The right-of-center political alliance known as Forza Italiana has written the pope a letter urging him to demand that Cuba stop human rights abuses when he and Castro meet. Havana, as usual, said nothing official on Castro's schedule in Rome, but he w as expected to arrive as early as sometime today, meet with Italian President Luigi Scalfaro during the day and address the FAO summit on Friday.
Castro at a monastery?
In an intriguing sideshow, Italian newspapers have reported that the Franciscan Order invited Castro to spend a night at its monastery in Assisi, a town in the Umbrian hills northeast of Rome where the order's founder, St. Francis, is buried.
A monk at the monastery -- who said he would be the first to know if Castro were coming -- denied the report. But that has not stopped speculation about Castro's seemingly changing sentiments on religion. The Jesuit-educated Castro, whose government wa s officially atheist throughout the 1960s and 70s, has recently made a number of personal comments on religion, even telling CBS anchorman Dan Rather that he has steadfastly maintained the ``ethics of a saint.''
Copyright © 1996 The Miami Herald