The pope wants Cubans to focus on themselves, but not too much

GlobalPost

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Need to know:

If you're wondering what the mood was like in Havana's Revolution Square before Pope Francis' mass this morning, take a look at this video. Some of those people had been waiting there since 3 a.m. — if not a holy act, still incredibly impressive.

In his much anticipated mass in Havana, delivered in the exact spot where the Communist government stages its biggest rallies, the pope decided to focus on the individual — which could be construed as a subtle critique of the island's dominant ideology. 

He began by asking, who is more important: the one serving or the one who is served? The question begged Cubans to consider their own personal vocations.

"We need to be careful not to be tempted by another kind of service, a 'service' which is 'self-serving,'" he said. "Service is never ideological, for we do not serve ideas, we serve people."

Francis has been a huge proponent of the warming ties between Cuba and the US — indeed, he secretly brokered the recent detente. Many view his visit to Cuba, which will be followed by a visit to the US, as a political move to further that relationship. But whether he will succeed or not is still an open question, as GlobalPost's Jamie Stark reports

The pope is set now to meet the Castro brothers, though it's uncertain is what he will say about religious freedom and the US embargo. He seems unlikely to push a hardline — which could anger Catholics looking for as hard a stance against Cuban communism as he has taken against capitalism and trickle-down economics.

Want to know:

If you can't keep them, pass them on. That seems to be the mode of the day where migrants are concerned, and it's a mentality that means 10,700 migrants walked into Austria from Hungary on Sunday — which is almost more than arrived during all of Saturday when 11,000 migrants crossed into Austria from Hungary.

It's just so many people. Faced with such an influx, Croatia has been moving them through, bringing people to its border with Hungary where they are them passed on to Austria. Hungary erected a steel gate and fence posts at a border crossing with Croatia on Sunday, trying to seal off a route the migrants had been taking. GlobalPost's Richard Hall reports from that border, where weary migrants get off the bus and don't even know what country they're in. 

If this situation sounds untenable that's because it is, and the fact that everyone has been saying as much for the last several weeks doesn't change that fact. Countries at the receiving end of this wave of migration, such as Slovenia, Austria and Germany, are already reacting to the influx by introducing tighter controls on their borders.

Strange but true:

Most Germans have consigned Hitler's Third Reich to history. But 70 years since the Fuhrer's demise, his crude ideology still exerts a hold on public life in unexpected ways. Part of Germany’s legal code in particular still has a strong whiff of Nazi thinking — especially the section about murder.

Recently, German Justice Minister Heiko Maas proposed overhauling the criminal code and expunging traces of Nazism. He’s now drafting a new law. That should be simple enough, right? It’s actually proving pretty divisive, reports GlobalPost's Mihret Yohannes.

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