Catholic leaders say Cuba receptive to Church role

HAVANA, July 14 (Reuters) - Leaders of the Roman Catholic Church in Latin America met with the Cuban government this week and said their requests for a wider role for Catholicism in the commmunist-run country had found receptive ears.

''The government is opening up to dialogue with the Church.

The climate has improved,'' Archbishop Raymundo Damasceno Assis of Aparecida, Brazil, said yesterday at a news conference.

Fifty bishops from across Latin America met in Havana to elect new leaders of the Latin American Bishops Conference. It was the first time the conference has met in Cuba, for years an officially atheist state.

On Wednesday, the bishops met in a former convent with Cuban vice presidents Carlos Lage and Esteban Lazo, and the ministers of Health, Culture and Foreign Affairs.

''It was a cordial meeting,'' said Damasceno Assis, the newly elected president of the the bishops conference, who hosted Pope Benedict's visit to Brazil in May.

''The doors were left open to more meetings,'' said Bishop Emilio Aranguren of Holguin, Cuba.

The Cuban government agreed to allow the Church to hold Masses for Catholics among the thousands of Latin American students training to be doctors in Cuba, Aranguren said.

The Church's demands for access to the state-run education system and media or the return of confiscated properties were not brought up, he said.

The Church's hierarchy has sought better ties with the government by putting years of tensions behind it and avoiding criticism of human rights abuses under the one-party state.

Following the revolution led by Fidel Castro in 1959, Catholicism faced the expulsion of priests and decades of official atheism.

The Church got a big boost in Cuba from the landmark visit by Pope John Paul II in 1998. Churches filled up again and the number of practicing Catholics multiplied.

But it has not been allowed to build new churches, have regular access to radio and television broadcasts or play a role in education.

Araguren said the Church has been given access to Cuba's prisons, though only to see individual inmates who request to see a chaplain.

''We hope to hold Masses in jails one day, at least on religious holidays,'' he said.

REUTERS GT HS0843