.c The Associated Press
HAVANA (AP) - About 2,000 worshipers, many of them chanting "viva the pope,'' gathered in the main plaza of the Cuban capital Monday night for the last in a historic series of open-air Masses before next month's visit of Pope John Paul II.
While there were few signs of government security forces in and around the enthusiastic crowd, Cardinal Jaime Ortega took pains to stress the patriotism of the Roman Catholic Church and its faithful in a country whose communist government in the past viewed them with suspicion.
"The love of the fatherland cannot be opposed to religious faith,'' said Ortega, speaking from the steps of Havana's cathedral before a large crucifix and the flags of Cuba and the Vatican.
It was the final in a series of Masses meant to rally enthusiasm for the papal visit in late January and help work out logistics for the much larger crowds expected for the pope.
Most of those masses attracted a few hundred worshipers.
The first of those Masses on June 29 was the first open-air Mass allowed in decades by the government. A total of seven masses were held in public, two others were in the gardens of church facilities and two were inside churches.
The nighttime Mass competed for attention with a local film festival, which had people lined up for blocks outside many theaters in Havana, and with the need for many to go to work in the morning.
Ortega devoted much of his sermon to criticism of abortion and birth control, as well as to calls for greater moral values in Cuba.
"Men should confront evil,'' he said.
"We have to recover the values of the family,'' said the cardinal, who said he knew of one 14-year-old girl who has had four abortions - a common method of birth control in Cuba.
He also struck a nationalistic chord, noting that the pope on a visit to the eastern city of Santiago will crown Cuba's patron saint, the Virgin of Charity of Cobre.
He noted she was venerated by the Cuban independence fighters, the Mambis, at the end of the 19th century.
AP-NY-12-09-97 0016EST