BY FIDEL CASTRO
Below we reprint the speech given by Cuban president Fidel Castro at the January 25 ceremony concluding the visit of Pope John Paul II to Cuba. Translation is by the Militant.

Your Holiness, I believe we have given the world an excellent example: you, by visiting what some people call the last bastion of communism; we, by receiving the religious leaders said to have been responsible for the destruction of socialism in Europe. Some forecast apocalyptic events, others dreamed of them.

It was cruelly unjust that some associated your pastoral visit with the mean-spirited hope of destroying the noble aims and independence of a small country that has been subjected to blockade and full-scale economic war for nearly 40 years.

Your holiness, Cuba is like a new but 1,000 times smaller David, armed with the same sling as in biblical times. We are fighting for survival against a giant nuclear-age Goliath who is trying to prevent our development and bring us to our knees through hunger and illness. If this story had not been written then, it would have to be written now. This monstrous crime cannot be excused or overlooked.

Your Holiness, every time I hear or read the slanders contrived against my country and my people by those who love no other God than money, I always recall - as I mentioned the day you arrived - the Christians of ancient Rome, who were so atrociously slandered themselves. Throughout history, slander has often been used as the great justification for crimes against peoples. I also remember the Jews who were exterminated by the Nazis, and the four million Vietnamese who died as the result of napalm, chemical weapons, and bombs. The fact they were Christians, Jews, or communists did not give anyone the right to exterminate them.

Thousands of journalists have broadcast every detail of your visit, every word spoken, to millions of people around the world. Countless Cubans and visitors from abroad were interviewed throughout the country. Our national television stations broadcast live to our people every mass, homily, and speech. Perhaps never before has so much news and opinion about such a small nation been heard in such a short space of time and by so many people on our planet.

Cuba does not know fear; it despises lies, it listens with respect, it believes in its ideas, it steadfastly defends its principles, and has nothing to hide from the world.

I am moved by your holiness's efforts on behalf of a more just world. States will disappear, peoples will come to constitute one single human family. If that solidarity you proclaim is extended throughout the earth, and the abundance of wealth that humans are capable of producing with their skills and labor are equitably shared among all human beings currently inhabiting the planet, a world without hunger or poverty could really be created; a world without oppression or exploitation, without humiliation or contempt, without injustice or inequalities, where humanity could live with full moral and material dignity, in genuine liberty.

That would be the most just world! Your views on the gospel, on worldwide cooperation among people of faith, would not be in contradiction with such a world.

For the honor of your visit, for all your expressions of affection for Cubans, for all your words, even those with which I might disagree, in the name of all the people of Cuba, your holiness, I thank you.  
 
 
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