Havana, Cuba - The Vatican secretary of state's trip to Cuba Wednesday to commemorate the 10-year anniversary of Pope John Paul II's historic visit comes at a critical moment in the future of the island country, which has had mixed relations with the Roman Catholic Church.
Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, who reports to the Vatican's Holy See, was to arrive in Cuba late Wednesday, a day after Fidel Castro resigned from his 49-year rule, citing health problems.
The timing is coincidence and the visit purely pastoral, said Cuba's Roman Catholic Cardinal Jaime Ortega, who along with the Cuban government invited Bertone for the six-day trip.
"The imprint that Pope John Paul II left on Cuba is very deep," Ortega after a Sunday Mass. "From that moment, things were different in the relationship between the church and society and with the state. Bertone's visit follows up on that."
Relations were mixed between the Vatican and Castro's communist government, which never outlawed religion but expelled priests and closed religious schools upon his takeover of Cuba in 1959.
Church-state relations eased in the early 1990s when the government removed references to atheism in the constitution and let believers of all faiths join the Communist Party. Relations warmed more with John Paul's 1998 visit _ the first to Cuba by a pope.
Raul Castro, who is likely to be named president by parliament Sunday, greeted John Paul during his visit to Santiago, where he celebrated Mass and paid homage to the Virgin of Charity of Cobre, Cuba's patron saint.
On the eve of his travel, Bertone raised the possibility in a newspaper interview of a future trip by Pope Benedict XVI.
"Up until now it hasn't been possible. In the future we will see," he said without elaborating.
Bertone's six-day trip marks the highest-level visit to Cuba by a Vatican official under Pope Benedict XVI's tenure. It coincides with Sunday's meeting of Cuba's newly elected parliament to choose new leaders, already scheduled before the 81-year-old Castro stepped aside permanently.
After visits to central and eastern Cuban, Bertone will meet Monday and Tuesday with top officials, including Raul Castro, who ruled provisionally for 19 months during his brother Fidel's illness.
Bertone also is set to celebrate a Mass Sunday morning in Guantanamo to mark John Paul's creation of a diocese 10 years ago in the southeastern province surrounding the U.S. naval base there.
There was no mention of a meeting with Fidel, who welcomed John Paul to Cuba and attended a massive papal Mass in Havana's Revolution Plaza.
Despite huge expectations, very little changed after the trip, during which John Paul urged the island to "open to the world" and "the world to open to Cuba." The Polish-born pope was associated with the fall of communism in his homeland.