HAVANA, Sept 8 (Reuters) - Cuba's ruling Communist Party showed
                  increased tolerance on Tuesday toward the Roman Catholic Church as
                  thousands openly paid homage to sacred images in the biggest show of
                  religious fervor since Pope John Paul's visit.

                  Throughout the Caribbean island, believers celebrated the annual festival of
                  Cuba's patroness -- the Virgin of Charity of Cobre -- in individual
                  pilgrimages, unprecedented open-air processions and well-attended Masses.

                  Cuba's Catholic leader, Cardinal Jaime Ortega, broadcast a homily on local
                  radio, which despite its low-key tone, was rare access for the church to
                  state-run media.

                  "For we Cubans, the Virgin means everything, she means hope, the hope of
                  living better," 40-year-old biologist Luis Alberto Sosa said outside the Virgin
                  of Charity church in downtown Havana at a ceremony on Tuesday night.

                  He joined several thousand others -- many carrying flags or balloons -- as
                  an image of the Virgin was paraded through the narrow streets outside the
                  Havana church for the first time in 40 years on this feast day, witnesses said.

                  Ortega and the papal nuncio, the Vatican's ambassador in Cuba, Beniamino
                  Stella, led the procession with other senior clergy as a band played, and the
                  crowd applauded or chanted in Spanish: "You can hear it! You can feel it!
                  The Virgin is with us!"

                  There was a large presence of plainclothes security officers, including at least
                  one shadowing U.S. diplomats in attendance and another filming
                  participants.

                  At the main shrine to the Virgin of Charity in the El Cobre mine in eastern
                  Cuba, crowds gathered from late on Monday and stayed through the night
                  to honour a wooden effigy of the Madonna and Child said to have been
                  found floating at sea -- miraculously dry -- by fishermen nearly four centuries
                  ago.

                  It was beside that effigy that the pope held a Mass for 100,000 people in
                  Santiago de Cuba on Jan. 24, using the word "freedom" 10 times in a
                  remarkable homily that also urged "the recognition of human rights and social
                  justice."

                  After Castro's 1959 revolution and later proclamation of a socialist and
                  officially atheistic state, the government sidelined the Catholic church --
                  nationalising church schools, expelling priests, abolishing Christmas as a
                  holiday and promoting discrimination at work against believers.

                  But the pope's five-day visit this year consolidated an official thawing toward
                  religion in recent times, and gave the Catholic Church for the first time
                  access to state media and permission to hold open-air services.

                  The church has since sought to build on those concessions while not
                  antagonizing the government.

                  Ortega followed that line in his radio address on Tuesday, avoiding political
                  references to give a brief history of the Virgin of Charity and an exhortation
                  to the Cuban people to follow Christian faith and values. He called for the
                  Virgin to bless all Cubans, including its leaders, and to help unite Cubans on
                  the island and those in exile abroad.

                  As well as the Virgin of Charity, Cubans were also paying homage this week
                  to the Virgin of Regla -- represented by a black image of the Virgin Mary
                  said to have miraculously saved fishermen in Havana Bay.

                  Watched by policemen at a discreet distance, at least 1,500 people took
                  part in a noisy procession in the Havana suburb of Regla on Monday night,
                  which locals said was also unprecedented in size and scope.

                  While the celebrations were mainly organised by the Catholic Church, they
                  blended aspects of the island's popular Afro-Cuban Santeria religion, which
                  came with the slave trade.

                  At the service in Regla, many carried small black dolls, and offered prayers
                  to the Santeria figure of Yemaya -- the Mother figure and owner of the seas
                  -- also represented for followers of Santeria by the Virgin of Regla.

                  Despite the higher profile of religious events in Cuba since the pontiff's trip,
                  the Catholic Church is still far from enjoying the freedom it has in other Latin
                  American countries.

                  The Catholic Church claims to be the leading religion in Cuba, claiming some
                  70 percent of Cuba's 11 million people as adherents. But many of those
                  include Santeria followers and numbers attending church regularly are small.

                  But the church is still arguably the strongest alternative public voice in Cuba's
                  tightly controlled society and is viewed by some as a possible agent for
                  political change.

                  Despite the apparent showing of religious tolerance, Cuba's illegal opposition
                  groups said on Tuesday authorities had detained six dissidents in the biggest
                  crackdown on anti-government activism since the pope's visit.

                  Opposition sources said the arrests may have been intended as a preemptive
                  strike by authorities to prevent anti-government demonstrations at the public
                  religious festivities.

                  Copyright 1998 Reuters Limited.