Miami pilgrims charter airliner for pope's Cuban visit

Leaders of the Roman Catholic church in the American city of Miami are pressing ahead with plans to organise a pilgrimage to Cuba when the Pope visits the island in three weeks' time.

Under pressure from the powerful Cuban exile community in the United States the church last month cancelled previousplans to send a thousand pilgrims to Cuba by cruise liner.

Now, however, they've announced they'll charter an airliner, to take more than a hundred-and-fifty people on a day-trip for an open-air mass in Havana.

From the newsroom of the BBC World Service