Published Wednesday, January 21, 1998, in the Miami Herald

PAPAL VISIT TO CUBA
From Herald Wire Services

BALLOON MESSAGE

Anti-Castro slogan floats over Rome

ROME -- A balloon 21 feet in diameter floated over Rome on Tuesday with a banner reading: ``Pope: Freedom for Cuba. No to Castro.''

Sponsored by the Radical Transnational Party, it was inflated and sent aloft in front of the Colosseum in a ceremony attended by party officials; the head of the Italian Committee on Human Rights in Cuba, Laura Gonzales; and Cuban dissident actress Miriam Acevedo.

TAKING A BREAK

Number of prostitutes appears to drop

HAVANA -- Many of Havana's prostitutes appeared to be taking a holiday -- not necessarily a voluntary one -- as the arrival of Pope John Paul II approaches.

On Monday night, there was a noticeable drop in the number of women patrolling the usual hangouts for jineteras along the seaside Malecon and Quinta Avenida.

``A police bus started picking up some of the girls a few nights ago around the Hotel Cohiba,'' said a 29-year-old woman who gave her name only as Damaris.

ETC.

  • ITALY'S RAI public television is sending 104 people to cover the pope, sparking complaints from Italians that their taxes are going to pay for journalists' winter vacations in Cuba.
  • JOHN PAUL II seems to have a special place in his heart -- and in his passport -- for Latin America. Of the 80 trips to 116 countries he has made since he became pope, 16 trips and 27 countries have been in Latin America. With 413 million Roman Catholics, Latin America has 28 Cardinals.
  • CUBA'S church is so poor that several foreign churches have been taking up special collections to help it finance the pope's visit. Chile's church donated $30,000 and a large supply of rosaries, stamps and Bibles. Panama's churches are passing the plate a second time for Cuba. And Spanish Catholics donated the chalice, ciborium, paten and chasuble that John Paul will use in his Mass Saturday in Santiago de Cuba.
  • ONE PAPAL JOKE making the rounds in Havana:

    John Paul and Fidel Castro take a stroll down Havana's seaside Malecon, and a gust of wind casts the pope's hat into the ocean. Castro goes to fetch it -- and walks on the water.

    The next days's headline in Granma, the official Communist Party newspaper, reads Fidel is God. The Vatican's Osservatore Romano headlines its story The pope makes Fidel walk on water. And The Miami Herald: Fidel can't swim.

  • CUBA HAS DENIED a papal coverage visa to Cesar Romero Jacobo, a journalist with the Mexican newspaper Reforma who wrote at length about the presence in Cuba of a wanted Mexican drug lord, Amado Carrillo Fuentes, reputed head of the Juarez drug cartel.
  • CUBA'S POST OFFICE is issuing three special stamps for the papal visit. One shows John Paul welcoming Castro in the Vatican in 1996, another shows the Havana Cathedral and the third shows the shrine to Our Lady of Charity in the eastern town of El Cobre.
  • SPAIN'S government-owned RadioTelevision has opened a permanent news bureau in Havana in time for John Paul's visit. Editors said the correspondent would be Vicenc Sanclement, a veteran journalist from the northeastern Catalonia region.
  • THE PRESS CENTER for the pope's visit will be at the Habana Libre-Tryp, a hotel in downtown Havana once a favorite of U.S. tourists when it was the Havana Hilton in pre-Castro days.

    Copyright © 1998 The Miami Herald