Pope Francis holds Mass before 300,000 in Havana

Pope Francis
(Image credit: Carl Court/Getty Images)

Pope Francis met with former Cuban President Fidel Castro on Sunday, along with his wife, sons, and grandsons, a Vatican spokesman said. Before the 40-minute meeting where the two exchanged books, the pope held Mass in Havana's Revolution Square for a crowd of 300,000, ABC News reports.

"God's holy and faithful people in Cuba is a people with a taste for parties, for friendship, for beautiful things," Francis said during Mass. "It is a people which marches with songs of praise. It is a people which has its wounds, like every other people, yet knows how to stand up with open arms, to keep walking in hope, because it has a vocation of grandeur."

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Julie Kliegman

Julie Kliegman is a freelance writer based in New York. Her work has appeared in BuzzFeed, Vox, Mental Floss, Paste, the Tampa Bay Times and PolitiFact. Her cats can do somersaults.