HAVANA (Reuters) -- Roman Catholic Church leaders from across the
                  Americas gathered in Havana Sunday for a meeting to discuss ways of
                  strengthening the Church's mission on the continent, including in
                  communist-ruled Cuba.

                  It was the first time the two-yearly Inter- American Bishops' Meeting has
                  been held in Cuba, which just over a year ago hosted a historic visit by Pope
                  John Paul II, leader of the world's Roman Catholics.

                  The five cardinals and 25 bishops attending the three-day meeting included a
                  big contingent from the United States.

                  They were due to review the impact on the Cuban Catholic Church of the
                  pope's January 1998 visit, which marked a high- point in improved relations
                  between the Church and the one- party communist government led by
                  President Fidel Castro.

                  Before the papal visit, such a high-level Catholic Church gathering in Cuba
                  would have been unthinkable.

                  "The meeting will bring the pope's visit to Cuba to the forefront again,"
                  Father Jose Felix Perez of the Cuban Catholic Bishops' Conference told
                  reporters in Havana.

                  Also on the agenda was a discussion of the Church's broad strategy for the
                  new millennium in the Americas, set out by the pontiff when he visited
                  Mexico last month.

                  The pope's report, which wraps up work done at a Synod of the Americas
                  at the Vatican in 1997, expresses views on poverty, foreign debt, drugs and
                  human rights and identifies temporal and spiritual challenges facing the
                  Catholic Church.

                  Before starting closed-door discussions in a Havana hotel on Monday, the
                  bishops from the Americas took part in a pilgrimage early Sunday to the
                  shrine in eastern Cuba of the Virgin of Charity of El Cobre, the island's
                  Catholic patroness.

                  They were later due to attend a mass to be given by Cuba's Cardinal Jaime
                  Ortega at Havana's cathedral.

                  Church officials said the presence of 14 high-ranking U.S. and Canadian
                  prelates reflected a desire to strengthen cooperation between the bishops'
                  conferences of the rich and developed north of the continent and those of the
                  poorer and largely underdeveloped south.

                  This would include strategies for channeling humanitarian aid through
                  Catholic charities.

                  The U.S. bishops attending included Monsignor Joseph Fiorenza, the Bishop
                  of Galveston-Houston and President of the U.S. Catholic Bishops'
                  Conference. Monsignor Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga, the Archbishop of
                  Tegucigalpa, headed the delegation from the Latin American Episcopal
                  Council (CELAM).

                  Among specially invited guests were Cardinal Lucas Moreira Neves,
                  president of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America at the Vatican, and
                  Cardinal Bernard Law of Boston, who has been part of a campaign to try to
                  persuade the U.S. government to lift its longstanding economic embargo
                  against Cuba.

                  The bishops' gathering in Havana was expected to include contacts with
                  Cuban officials. Church spokesmen said no meeting with Castro was
                  formally scheduled but could not be ruled out.

                     Copyright 1999 Reuters.