Cuba declares Good Friday a public holiday

Cuba declared Good Friday a holiday following a request by Pope Benedict in a meeting held last week in Havana with President Raul Castro.

Religious holidays in Cuba were cancelled after the 1959 revolution, and fewer than 10% of Cubans are practising Catholics.

Nonetheless, the Church is the most influential organisation outside the Cuban government.

The government said it granted the request as a mark of respect, and to commemorate the "transcendental nature" of the pope's visit.

Cuba had reinstated Christmas to honour a request by Pope John Paul when he visited Cuba in 1998, in a trip that marked a turn for the better in Church-state relations, which have improved in recent years.

During his visit in Cuba, Pope Benedict criticised the 50-year-old US trade embargo on Cuba and called for 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, the Pope 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.