Cuba agrees to let Catholic leader broadcast Christmas message

             HAVANA -- (AP) -- Cuba granted the Roman Catholic church a rare Christmas
             wish on Friday: authorization to send a national holiday greeting over
             government-controlled radio.

             Cardinal Jaime Ortega, Cuba's top Catholic leader, received permission to read
             the message Christmas afternoon over the music station called Radio Musical
             Nacional, government and church sources confirmed.

             The authorization was a sign of continued warming relations between President
             Fidel Castro's government and the church nearly a year after Pope John Paul II
             visited the island.

             It comes a month after the government declared that Christmas Day would
             become an official permanent holiday. It granted Christmas as a holiday last year
             as a favor to the Pope before his January 1998 visit.

             Access to the official media has been one of the church's leading demands and
             was granted on a limited basis before and during the papal visit, which was
             covered extensively by government broadcasts.

             Ortega said last week that he had asked the government for permission to send a
             radio message that would explain to Cubans the Christian meaning of Christmas.

             Christmas ``is not a carnival, nor is it an end-of-year party that you celebrate in a
             public plaza,'' Ortega said at the time. ``It is something intimate and of the family.''

             Cubans have embraced the idea of having another day off, but the resurgent
             celebrations remain largely secular.

             Most families in the capital celebrated by decorating a small artificial Christmas
             tree in their home and sharing quiet holiday meals of roast pork with their families.

             Still, as last year, hundreds crowded churches for midnight Christmas Eve services
             -- a tradition that has grown in recent years.

             Early Christmas morning, most residents of Havana seemed to be celebrating the
             holiday by sleeping late. The capital's streets were more quiet than an average
             Sunday.

             Ortega and other church leaders in recent days have emphasized the need to
             recapture the religious traditions of the holiday, largely forgotten during the nearly
             three decades that Christmas was abolished.

             Although the government declared itself atheist in 1962, Christmas remained an
             official holiday in Cuba until 1969.