The first public photo of former Cuban leader Fidel Castro since June has appeared on the internet page of the Russian Orthodox Church.

The photo shows Castro with Metropolitan Kiril Gundjaev during the Orthodox church leader's visit to Havana last month to inaugurate a new cathedral in Old Havana.

The 82-year-old Castro appears not much changed from his last publicly available image, taken during a Junre visit to Havana by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. After his meeting with Castro on Oct. 20, Gundjaev, head of the foreign church affairs for the Moscow patriarchate, told journalists that Castro had seemed "lucid but somewhat weak.''

At the time, Cuba's oficial media published photos of the visitor's meeting with Raul Castro, Fidel's brother and successor, and reports but no photos on his meeting with Fidel Castro.

The photo of Castro and Gundjaev began making the rounds of the Internet after exiled Cuban historian Emilio Ichikawa published it in his blog Monday. He said a reader had alerted him to the photo's existence on the Russian church's internet pages.

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