Pope Benedict criticises US embargo on Cuba

Pope Benedict criticised the 50-year-old US trade embargo on Cuba as he wrapped up a three-day visit to the island on Wednesday, urging reconciliation and greater freedoms.

The leader of the world's 1.2 billion Catholics also met with Cuba's revolutionary icon and former president, Fidel Castro. A Vatican spokesman described the meeting as "animated and cordial", with the two men even sharing a joke about their ages.

The Pope also called for greater rights in Cuba, saying he wanted a society in which no-one was denied basic freedoms.

This aim was not helped by economic measures which "unfairly burden" Cuba's people, he said.

The Pontiff made his parting comments in the airport in Havana, in the presence of the current president, Raul Castro.

He said all Cubans should be able to share in "forging a society of wide horizons, renewed and reconciled".

"No-one should feel excluded from taking up this exciting search by the limitations of their basic freedoms, or excused from this by indolence or a lack of material resources - a situation which is worsened when restrictive economic measures, imposed from outside the country, unfairly burden its people," he said.

Benedict also led a public Mass in Havana's vast Revolution Square where Castro, 85, once drew huge crowds to listen to his fiery speeches.

Surrounded by 10-storey 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 US trade embargo, known as the blockade, was introduced soon after the 1959 Revolution.

in 1962, with the support of Cubans who had fled to the United States, after Fidel Castro's Cuba nationalised the properties of American citizens and corporations.

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.

But while Benedict is urging Cuba to make deeper changes, the government sees its reforms as a way of strengthening communist rule, not weakening it.