Pope Francis has arrived in Santiago on the southeastern coast of Cuba. After the Alitalia plane carrying Francis on his tour of the island touched down, the Pontiff emerged onto a red carpet rolled across the tarmac.
Francis' schedule calls for him to visit the shrine to the Virgin of Charity of Cobre, the country's patron saint, in the evening.
Santiago is Cuba's second-largest city and the last stop on the Pope's tour of the island before heading to the United States on Tuesday.
Previously, Francis visited the city of Holguin, ending with a blessing for Cuba's fourth-largest city from the Hill of the Cross, a pilgrimage site overlooking the area.
In Holguin, Francis praised Cuba's "mission houses," private homes that opened their doors for priests and laypeople to worship during the decades when the Catholic Church was left out in the cold.
Francis said in his homily at an outdoor mass in Holguin's Revolution Plaza that the houses deserve a "special mention" for helping to maintain the faith "despite the scarcity of churches and priests."
The church was barred from building new houses of worship for years after Fidel Castro's 1959 revolution turned Cuba into a communist state. Many priests were expelled from the country or sent to military-run work camps in the countryside in the 1960s.
Today there are some 2,600 mission houses in Cuba — mostly in rural and mountainous parts of the island. That compares to 700 parishes.
Church-state tensions have eased since the 1990s.
Local Bishops' Conference spokesman Orlando Marquez said Monday that construction of three new churches was recently authorized for Havana, Pinar del Rio and Santiago.
The Pontiff also said that Christ challenges us daily to believe in the possibility of personal transformation.
"He invites us slowly to overcome our preconceptions and our reluctance to think that others, much less ourselves, can change."
During the Pope's third day on the island, he called on Cubans to serve people rather than ideologies and not close themselves off to others who think differently.
Holguin's Plaza of the Revolution was packed with thousands of people waving flags as Francis traveled in his popemobile through the crowd.
Cuban First Vice President Miguel Diaz-Canel headed the government delegation to receive the pontiff in the city.
