Castro-t fogadja a pápa

In 1996, Pope John Paul II became the first Pope to receive a Cuban leader when Fidel Castro travelled to the Vatican.

President Castro, the brother of Fidel, was last in Rome in 1997 when he was defence minister. At the time he was preparing the historic visit of John Paul II to Havana the following year.

The Catholic Church has organised a series of secret diplomatic meetings to broker the US-Cuban rapprochement.

The talks directly involved Pope Francis. The US had imposed a trade embargo soon after Cuba's revolution, which it began to lift late last year.

The 78-year-old will be the third Pope to travel to Cuba, following visits there by John Paul II in 1998 and Benedict XVI in 2012.