Cuba's state-run television gave the country's top Roman Catholic prelate rare air time last night to inform Cubans that Pope John Paul II was on his deathbed.
"A great man is dying," Cardinal Jaime Ortega, Archbishop of Havana, said in a six-minute statement on the nightly television newscast.
It was only the second time the cardinal had addressed Cubans on television. The first was on the eve of the pontiff's historic visit to Cuba in January 1998.
For most Cubans the cardinal's appearance was the first news they had that the Pope was near death, since the island's state-controlled media had not mentioned his failing health.
"This is a man who has carried the moral weight of the world for 26 years ... turning himself into the only moral reference for humanity in recent years of wars and difficulties," Cardinal Ortega said.
The cardinal said the Pope never forgot his five-day visit to Cuba, which brought greater religious freedom for Cubans, though not the opening up of the Western Hemisphere's last Marxist state that many had expected.
One month before the first papal visit to Cuba, Cuba reinstated Christmas as a holiday in 1997.
In an open-air mass in Havana's Revolution Square, the Pope urged Cuba to open up to the world and called on the world to reach out to Cuba. He also condemned US sanctions against Cuba on his last day.
"Saying good-bye at the airport, President Fidel Castro thanked him for his words, including those he did not agree with," Cardinal Ortega said.
In 2003 the Pope said he was "pained" by the execution of three Cubans who hijacked a ferry in a bid to leave the country. In a letter to Castro he also asked for clemency for jailed dissidents, but his request was never answered.