HAVANA -- In an all-day barrage of astonishingly sharp criticism, Pope John Paul II exhorted Cuba on Saturday to free political prisoners, guarantee human rights and justice, and work toward a ``reconciliation'' of all Cubans, both here and abroad.

Appearing at a leper hospital in the evening, the pope used unusually blunt language to call for the release of political prisoners. Dissidents say President Fidel Castro's communist government holds at least 480 opponents in jail.

Aside from physical suffering, John Paul said, ``There is also suffering of the soul, such as we see in those who are isolated, persecuted, imprisoned for various offenses or for reasons of conscience, for ideas which though dissident are nonetheless peaceful.

``I encourage efforts to re-insert prisoners into society,'' he added, saying that such a gesture ``honors the authority promoting it and strengthens social harmony in the country.''

The pontiff's words went far beyond his vague request to Castro during their meeting Thursday to release an unknown number of prisoners, including some jailed for political causes but others simply ailing or approaching the end of long sentences.

John Paul II issued the demand on his third straight day of celebrating Masses in provincial capitals, this time electrifying tens of thousands of people and honoring Cuba's patron saint in Santiago de Cuba, the island's second-largest city.

With all the solemn pageantry that the 2,000-year-old church could muster, John Paul placed a solid gold crown and rosary on a small statue of Our Lady of Charity already cloaked in a richly gold-embroidered cape.

But it was the constant and frank criticism of the Cuban regime by the pope and the archbishop of Santiago that all but defined the next-to-last day of the pope's visit to Cuba, which ends today with a Mass in Havana's Plaza de la Revolucion.

Archbishop speaks bluntly

In an address that drew more applause than the pontiff's, Archbishop Pedro Meurice blasted Castro and communism during Saturday morning's Mass in Santiago de Cuba. The ceremony was televised nationally and attended by Castro's younger brother and anointed successor, Raul.

Meurice attacked Cubans ``who have confused fatherland with a [political] party . . . culture with an ideology,'' and added that ``the poorest among us are those who do not enjoy . . . liberty.''

Indirectly but clearly referring to President Castro, he added that Cubans ``need to learn to demystify false messiahs'' and criticized government restrictions on freedom of expression, saying, ``Uniformity cannot yield unity.''

Together, the criticisms by John Paul and Meurice amounted to the strongest and most public attacks on the government during the five-day papal visit -- and perhaps the strongest ever heard so widely inside the Western Hemisphere's last Marxist country.

Cuban government television cameras never showed the faces of Raul Castro and other top Communist Party officials who joined a reported 100,000 people in Santiago de Cuba's huge Antonio Maceo Plaza to attend the Mass.

But the waves of applause that erupted from the crowd showed that both men had struck sympathetic chords among the audience.

When Cubans chanted ``John Paul, amigo, the people are with you!'' the pontiff shot back, ``Cuba, amigo, the pope is with you.'' At one point during the Mass, television microphones picked up a voice shouting, ``Freedom for Cuba!''

With the Sierra Maestra mountains -- cradle of Castro's revolution -- serving as a majestic backdrop, John Paul could not have picked a more politically charged place to deliver a 25-minute homily on the homeland.

While thinly cloaked in pastoral language, the papal homily touched on subjects sure to irritate Castro: human rights, justice and the need for Roman Catholics to take ``prophetic stands'' -- church-speak for speaking out publicly -- ``in the face of corruption of political power.''

`Reconciliation'

Most significantly, John Paul called for ``reconciliation among all Cubans'' -- language that Vatican officials have described in the past as a veiled call for negotiations between Castro and his critics, both inside and outside the country.

Looking more feeble than in past days, perhaps due to Santiago's searing heat and humidity, the pope also urged Cubans to accept the church as the path for attaining ``true freedom, which includes the recognition of human rights and social justice.''

``In this regard, lay Catholics . . . have the duty and the right to participate in public debate on the basis of equality and in an attitude of dialogue and reconciliation,'' the pontiff said.

Applause broke out several times as the pontiff urged ``peaceful and gradual'' change in Cuba and said all Cubans ``enjoying appropriate freedom of expression'' should be able to shape the country's destiny.

In daring to make such criticism, John Paul II chose a city of 500,000 that is widely considered the most pro-Castro city in Cuba today.

Government TV cameras showed that the turnout was surprisingly thin in the Antonio Maceo Plaza, named after a hero of the war of independence against Spain whose giant statue astride a rearing horse sits to the side of the plaza.

Both John Paul and Meurice drew especially strong applause and a few ``Vivas!'' when they addressed the issue of the two million or so Cubans who now live abroad for political or economic reasons.

``From here I send my greetings to the sons of Cuba who, from whatever part of the world, venerate Our Lady of Charity, together with their brothers who live in this beautiful land,'' John Paul said.

`Internal and external exile'

Welcoming the pope before the Mass, Meurice noted that Cuba's many political, social and economic problems had perhaps contributed to ``internal and external exile.''

Drawing the strongest applause of the day, the pope recited an extended Hail Mary in which he asked the Virgin to help Cuba.

``Mother of Reconciliation, reunite your people now dispersed around the world . . . so that they will open their hearts to Jesus.''

``There is one nation here, and another living in diaspora; both suffer, live and keep hope alive,'' Meurice added.

Meurice noted that the dark-skinned statue of Our Lady of Charity was credited with having miraculously saved two Cuban Indians and a black slave when a storm threatened to sink their rowboat in the early 17th Century.

``We are one people who, navigating in big strokes across the seas, continue looking for a unity that will never be the result of uniformity,'' he said. ``On those seas is also the Virgin, of mixed race like our people. She is the hope of all Cuban people.''

Meurice also denounced ``the blockade imposed by foreign interests,'' a reference to the U.S. embargo of the island, before beginning the pope's third Mass in Cuba after ones in Santa Clara on Thursday and Camaguey on Friday.

John Paul drew waves of ``Vivas!'' when he wrapped a gold rosary around the hands and placed a tiny gold crown atop the head of the statue of Our Lady of Charity normally enshrined in a church in El Cobre, a former copper mining town six miles from Santiago.

The crowning by the pope, a follower of the church's Marian Devotion that holds up the mother of Jesus as the model for loving worship of God, in effect reaffirmed Our Lady of Charity as Cuba's patron saint.

After flying back to the Cuban capital, the pontiff went to the San Lazaro Hospice in El Rincon, on Havana's southern outskirts, to share in the ``world of suffering'' with lepers, the elderly and others stricken with illness.

San Lazaro is a hospice owned by the government and run by Catholic nuns of the Daughters of Charity. It may have been the emotional highlight of the pope's historic visit to Cuba.

Men in the final stages of AIDS sought his blessings. Lepers without fingers and with disfigured faces reached out to touch him. And a choir of youths wept, overcome by the sight of the feeble 77-year-old pontiff shuffling past them.

``Christ is very close to all who suffer,'' he told the patients. ``No suffering is lost. No pain is without significance.''