Raul Castro thanks Pope for mediating thaw with U.S.

The Cuban President says he was so impressed by the Pope that he might return to the Church, despite being a Communist.

Pope Francis with Cuban President Raul Castro during a private audience at the Vatican on Sunday.

Cuban President Raul Castro on Sunday thanked Pope Francis for brokering the thaw between Havana and Washington and said the Pope so impressed him that he might return to the Church, despite being a Communist.

The 83-year-old younger brother of Cuba’s revolutionary leader Fidel spoke with the Pope for nearly an hour, which is unusually long for a papal meeting. It was strictly private and not a state visit, he said.

Papal audiences on Sundays are extremely rare. Pope Francis made an exception when President Castro asked if he could stop in Rome on his way back from Moscow to thank the Pope for the Vatican’s mediation between the United States and Cuba, Cuban officials said.

Later, at a news conference with Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, President Castro said he came out of the meeting with the Pope “really impressed by his wisdom and his modesty.”

Pope Francis, who is due to visit both Cuba and the United States in September, is a member of the Jesuit religious order. The President joked that “even I am a Jesuit in a certain sense” because he was educated by the Jesuits before the revolution.

“When the Pope comes to Cuba in September, I promise to go to all his Masses and I will be happy to do so,” he said, adding that he reads all of the speeches of Latin America’s first Pope, who has made defence of the poor a major plank of his papacy.