With the Pope just landed in the US, it’s worth re-reading what the Washington Post had to say about his behavior in Cuba and contrast it with what he is likely to say here (my emphasis added):

IN HIS visit to the United States beginning Tuesday, Pope Francis will meet not just President Obama and Congress but also those marginalized by our society: homeless people, immigrants, refugees and even the inmates of a jail. He’s expected to raise topics that many Americans will find challenging, such as his harsh critique of capitalism. His supporters say it’s all part of the role the pope has embraced as an advocate for the powerless, one that has earned him admiration from both Catholics and some outside the church.
How, then, to explain Pope Francis’s behavior in Cuba? The pope is spending four days in a country whose Communist dictatorship has remained unrelenting in its repression of free speech, political dissent and other human rights despite a warming of relations with the Vatican and the United States. Yet by the end of his third day, the pope had said or done absolutely nothing that might discomfit his official hosts.
Pope Francis met with 89-year-old Fidel Castro, who holds no office in Cuba, but not with any members of the dissident community — in or outside of prison. According to the Web site 14ymedio.com, two opposition activists were invited to greet the pope at Havana’s cathedral Sunday but were arrested on the way. Dozens of other dissidents were detained when they attempted to attend an open air Mass. They needn’t have bothered: The pope said nothing in his homily about their cause, or even political freedom more generally. Those hunting for a message had to settle for a cryptic declaration that “service is never ideological.”
… Pope Francis may believe that merely by touring the country he will inspire Cubans to become more active and press the regime for change. But two previous papal visits, in 1998 and 2012, did not have that effect. By now it is clear that the Castros won’t be moved by quiet diplomacy or indirect hints. A direct campaign of words and acts, like that Pope Francis is planning for the United States, would surely have an impact. But then, it takes more fortitude to challenge a dictatorship than a democracy.

Well, if you are one of Cuba’s heroic Ladies in White (Damas de Blanco), it does, but if you are the Pope on an official visit, not so much. And yet….

Speaking of which, I wouldn’t put too much, well, faith, in anything that appears in Granma, the official newspaper of the Cuban Communist Party, but I couldn’t help noticing the jolly photographs it was running of Fidel and Francis yukking it up together, or even this report of a comment supposedly made by the Pope during the course of his conversation with the old butcher:

“El Papa Francisco expresó el agradecimiento a Cuba por su contribución a la paz y a la preservación de la especie humana en un mundo saturado de odio y agresiones.”

Apparently the Pope thanked Cuba for “its contribution to peace and the preservation of humanity in a world saturated with hate and aggression”.

Who knew?

But perhaps Granma made it up (it wouldn’t be the first time) or, maybe, as the phrase so often goes these days, the Pope “misspoke”.

Perhaps.