Moscow, May 9 (RHC) -- Cuban President Raul Castro invited the Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church, Kirill, to visit Cuba, during a cordial meeting on Friday as part of his official program in Russia.

It is a great pleasure for me to meet you again, said Raul Castro, recalling the first visit of the now leader of the Russian Orthodox Church.

Kirill, then Metropolitan of Smolensk and Kaliningrad, traveled to Havana in 2008 with the task of laying the foundation of the first
orthodox cathedral in the Caribbean island.

We would like you to visit us as Patriarch of the Orthodox Church. You can consider these words an invitation, which we will later confirm officially, stressed the Cuban leader.

Kirill thanked Raul for the invitation, noting that in Cuba there are thousands of Russians and Russian speakers, most of them Orthodox believers.