HAVANA -- Cuba's Cardinal Jaime Ortega led an outdoor Mass Friday honoring Cuba's patron saint, the Virgen de la Caridad del Cobre or Our Lady of Charity and exhorted his followers to get ready for a visit from Pope Benedict XVI.

Some 3,000 people gathered Friday afternoon in the Avenida del Puerto, the final stop in the patron saint’s 16-month national pilgrimage that marked the 400th anniversary of the Virgin's discovery.

The Our Lady of Charity statue traveled an estimated 18,600 miles.

Miami’s Archbishop Thomas Wenski was among those in attendance.

The pope is scheduled to visit Cuba and Mexico in the spring, before Easter, to mark the 400th anniversary of the discovery of the statue, and Wenski congratulated the people of Cuba ahead of his upcoming visit. It will be the first trip by a pontiff since John Paul II's historic tour in 1998.

“For us, the pope is a symbol of the unity,” he said “which we want to keep as a family of God through the church.”

Wenski was expected to return to South Florida on New Year’s Eve and speak to reporters on his arrival.

Cuba's church has played an increasingly important role in Cuba in recent years, helping negotiate the release of political prisoners in 2009 and 2010, and even consulting with President Raul Castro and his advisers on free-market changes he is pushing to save the island's economy from ruin.