Pope Benedict XVI said Monday that he plans to visit Cuba and Mexico before Easter next year, and prayed that God would guide Latin Americans in “building a society based on the development of good, the triumph of love and the spread of justice.”

The pontiff gave no specific dates for the visit as he celebrated mass in St. Peter’s Basilica in honor of Mexico’s Virgin of Guadalupe. The Easter week celebrations, which traditionally require a pope’s presence in the Vatican, start April 1.

Several unofficial news reports have previously said the pope would visit Cuba and Mexico March 23-28. But there has been no word on how many days he might spend in each country or what cities he might visit.

The Cuban Conference of Bishops Monday welcomed the pontiff’s comment “with much happiness and hope” but gave no details on the trip, first announced by the Vatican on Nov. 10 as a papal “desire.” The 84-year-old pope appears to be in frail health.

In Miami, the Catholic Church said it welcomed the confirmation of Benedict XVI’s visit as an endorsement of the pastoral work carried out by its counterpart on the island in recent years.

“For the church that lives and works there, this is a confirmation of its faith and hope, as well as recognition of its enormous and fruitful labor,” said The Rev. Juan Rumin Domínguez, rector of the Our Lady of Charity Shrine, spiritual center of Cuban exiles in Miami.

Rumin, who left Cuba in 2006, added that the church in Miami would likely undertake “different initiatives” in conjunction with the papal visit “that we hope can be announced sometime soon.”

Miami Archbishop Thomas Wenski told El Nuevo Herald two weeks ago that the archdiocese was considering organizing a pilgrimage to the island that would allow Cuban-Americans to participate in the pontiff’s visit.

Wenski was in Haiti on Monday, and the spokesperson for the archdiocese, Mary Ros Agosta, said no final decision has been made. “We have to take this step by step. Right now we’re anxiously waiting for the exact dates of the trip,” she said.

PERSPECTIVE

The Rev. Luis Menéndez, of the Corpus Christi parish in Allapattah added that he saw the papal visit as “eminently pastoral,” designed to allow Benedict XVI to “affirm in their faith those Catholics who live in Cuba.”

“To see the visit as something political is to look at it with only one eye,” Menéndez said. “That is not the correct perspective.”

The pope is expected to take part in events celebrating the 400th anniversary of Cuba’s patron saint, Our Lady of Charity. The tiny statue kept at El Cobre Basilica is said to have been found by three fishermen on Sept. 8, 1612, in the Bay of Nipe in eastern Cuba.

Benedict declared Monday that he intends to travel to Cuba and Mexico “before Easter to proclaim the word of Christ and to strengthen the conviction that this is a precious time to evangelize with a steady faith, a lively hope and an ardent charity.”

He also prayed that God would help people in Latin America to make decisions so they can move forward in “building a society based on the development of good, the triumph of love and the spread of justice.”

Attending the mass were Cardinals Jaime Ortega of Cuba, Norberto Rivera of Mexico City and Tarcisio Bertone, the Vatican’s secretary of state. Bertone visited Cuba in 2005 and in 2008.

The trip to Cuba and Mexico will be Benedict XVI’s second visit to Latin America, which holds nearly half the world’s Catholics. He visited Brazil in 2007, and is expected to return there next year for a youth festival.

His predecessor, John Paul II, who devoted much of his papacy to trying to spread his message around the world, made his first trip abroad to Mexico in 1979 and visited Cuba in early 1998.

GROWING ROLE

The church in Cuba, ruled by a communist government that was officially atheist for decades, has played an increasingly important role on the island, including the decision by ruler Raúl Castro to free about 115 political prisoners.

Castro also has allowed Ortega to build a new seminary, establish a business school in conjunction with a Spanish university and run charity programs such as soup kitchens for the poor and homes for the elderly.