Pope meets Castro as Cuba trip ends

Pope Benedict urged Cubans yesterday to search for “authentic freedom” and wound up his trip with a chat with the communist country’s revolutionary icon, Fidel Castro.

The men met in the Vatican embassy after the Pope celebrated an open-air mass for a crowd estimated at some 300,000 people in Havana’s Revolution Square.

Benedict, who said last week that communism no longer works in Cuba, pressed the government to let the Catholic Church teach religion in schools and universities.