Cuban President Raul Castro on Sunday thanked Pope Francis for brokering the thaw between Havana and Washington and said the pope so impressed him that he might return to the Church, despite being a communist.
The 83-year-old younger brother of Cuba's revolutionary leader Fidel spoke with the pope for nearly an hour - unusually long for a papal meeting - during a visit the Vatican said was strictly private and not a state visit.
Papal audiences on Sundays are extremely rare. Francis made an exception when Castro asked if he could stop in Rome on his way back from . . .
