MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Bendict calls for “authentic freedom” in Cuba and has cordial chat with Fidel Castro

The two octogenarian leaders exchange ideas at the Vatican embassy in Havana

Pope Benedict urged Cubans to search for “authentic freedom” and met with revolutionary icon Fidel Castro as he wrapped up a visit in which he said Cuba must change.

The leader of the world's 1.2 billon Catholics led a public Mass in Havana's vast Revolution Square where Castro, 85, once drew huge crowds to listen to his fiery hours-long speeches.

Surrounded by ten-story high images of Castro's late comrades Ernesto “Che” Guevara and Camilo Cienfuegos, the pope read a sermon that continued the main themes of his trip - that Cuba must build a more open, less controlled society, with a bigger role for the Roman Catholic Church as a buffer against “trauma” or social upheaval.

The Vatican estimated that 300,000 people were in the crowd for the Pope’s last mass on Wednesday.

Benedict's visit comes as President Raul Castro has undertaken economic reforms to encourage more private enterprise and embraced the Church as an interlocutor on social issues.

After the Mass, Fidel Castro, the president's older brother, visited Benedict at the Vatican embassy where the two octogenarian world leaders with widely divergent political views chatted for 30 minutes in what a Vatican spokesman called a “very cordial” atmosphere.

They discussed serious issues such as Church liturgy and the state of the world, but also joked about their age -- Benedict is 84. At one point, Castro asked a simple question - what does a pope do?

“The pope told him of his ministry, his trips, and his service to the Church,” said spokesman Federico Lombardi.

Photographs showed Castro and the Pope standing and smiling, with Castro wearing a dark track suit with a scarf around his neck that seemed out of place on a warm day.

The friendly meeting contrasted with the beginning of Benedict's visit when he sharply criticized the communist system that Castro put in place after taking power in a 1959 revolution and continues to defend as the last, best hope of mankind.

On the flight to Mexico beginning his Latin American trip on Friday, the pope said communism had failed in Cuba and that the country needs a new economic model.

In a possible dig at Marxism on Wednesday, Benedict also said some “wrongly interpret this search for the truth, leading them to irrationality and fanaticism; they close themselves in 'their truth,' and try to impose it on others.”

He said the said the search for truth “always supposes the exercise of authentic freedom.”