HAVANA (AP) -- Carrying large wooden crosses and singing
                  hymns, several hundred Cuban Catholics walked slowly through
                  the streets of the capital's Chinatown in a rare public
                  procession in observance of Good Friday.

                  "Forgive your people, Lord," the believers intoned, walking behind a group
                  of children from Our Lady of Charity parish, dressed as Mary, Jesus,
                  Roman soldiers and all the characters from a typical passion play.

                  It was the second Good Friday in a row that the parish in Central Havana
                  has organized the processional Viacrucis, or Stations of the Cross, since
                  Pope John Paul II's historic visit in January 1998.

                  Many see it as a sign of increasingly warm relations between the church and
                  the communist state, which once was officially atheist.

                  "The pope's visit really animated people," said Yvon Arias, 47, a lifelong
                  Roman Catholic who was baptized and married in the church.

                  Unlike Christmas, Holy Week and Easter are almost exclusively religious
                  holidays here, she pointed out. For her, the public observance of some of
                  the church's more somber holy days are proof of greater freedom for the
                  church.

                  "People celebrate Christmas for many reasons, not just for the birth of Jesus
                  Christ," she said. "Holy Week is fully religious."

                  Religious processions were discouraged and in some cases banned in the
                  early years after the January 1959 triumph of the revolution that brought
                  Fidel Castro to power.

                  Such processions in those years were used by some to protest against
                  Castro's newly communist government and were quickly quashed.

                  Although common in the rest of Latin America and the Caribbean, younger
                  Cubans have no memory of Good Friday processions. On Friday, scores of
                  curious people peered out of doors and windows of dilapidated buildings as
                  the procession wound its way through the neighborhood.

                  "What are they doing? Making a movie?" a teen-age boy asked as he sped
                  by on a bicycle.

                  The black-bearded, white-robed boy of about 8 years playing Jesus kept his
                  head bowed as the boys wearing the garb of Roman soldiers slapped him
                  with their toy swords.

                  "It will take people a while to learn," said Arias. "This is a sign of an opening
                  for the Christian faith."