Pope Francis will visit Cuba en route to the United States in September, the Vatican said yesterday, capping his success in bringing the former enemies together after more than half a century of distrust.

Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi did not specify how long the stop in Cuba would last, saying only that Pope Francis had accepted invitations made by the Cuban government and the Cuban Roman Catholic Church.

It will be the Argentine Pope’s first visit to Cuba as pontiff. Both his predecessors, Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI, visited the island and met revolutionary leader Fidel Castro.

Last December, Havana and Washington announced after 18 months of secret diplomacy brokered by the Pope’s diplomats and Canada that the two sides were working to re-open embassies in their respective capitals.

“Both President Raul Castro and President Obama recognised and explicitly thanked the Holy Father for his gesture,” Monsignor Jose Felix Perez of the Cuban Catholic Bishops’ Conference, told Reuters in Havana.

“His mediation, without a doubt, was effective and in line with the Christian spirit that always brings out reconciliation as the solution to conflicts,” Perez said.

Cuba had been a focal point for Vatican diplomats ever since Fidel Castro took power in 1959 and restricted church activities in what was a deeply Catholic country.

The Vatican’s opposition to the US embargo over the years gave it credibility with Havana as a diplomatic broker while at the same time it had good relations with a string of US administrations.

US President Barack Obama visited the Pope last year and discussed Cuba.

Pope Francis later wrote personal letters to Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro urging them to “initiate a new phase” in their relations. Obama and Raul Castro met on April 11 at the Summit of the Americas in Panama, the first formal face-to-face meeting of the two countries’ leaders in more than half a century.

The Pope is due to arrive in Washington on September 22 and will also visit New York and Philadelphia. He will visit the White House and Congress in Washington, DC, and address the United Nations in New York City.

Sign up to our free newsletters

Get the best updates straight to your inbox:
Please select at least one mailing list.

You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link in the footer of our emails. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform. By subscribing, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing.