POPE ISSUES CALL TO CUBA'S YOUTH.

Byline: Celestine Bohlen The New York Times

Traveling halfway across Cuba to the most enthusiastic reception of his trip so far, Pope John Paul II urged Cubans on Friday to find their Christian roots and warned them to stop a slide toward a life of ``emptiness,'' without faith, morals or ideals.

In a message to Cuban youth delivered during a Mass in the central Cuban city of Camaguey, the 77-year-old pope urged Cubans to take charge of their own lives. It is a theme he has repeated several times since he arrived Wednesday in a country where the Communist Party still maintains near-total control.

``Do not look outside for what is to be found inside,'' he said in remarks that were often interrupted by applause from a flag-waving crowd of 80,000 in Camaguey's central square, where the Mass was held. ``Do not leave for tomorrow the building of a new society in which the noblest dreams are not frustrated and in which you can be the principal agents of your own history.''

Arriving in Camaguey on Friday morning after a 45-minute flight from Havana, accompanied by a retinue of bishops and cardinals, the pope moved through the central square in his glass-enclosed car to chants of ``John Paul II, the world loves you!'' and ``Pope, stay in Camaguey!''

Capital of Cuba's rich sugar-cane growing region, Camaguey is considered the most Catholic of Cuban cities, and the welcome there was warmer than he had received Thursday in Santa Clara, where many seemed more puzzled than moved by his presence. In the homily during a Mass punctuated by religious songs sung to the beat of Cuban popular music, the pope warned young people against the lure of materialism.

``When young people live life their way, they idealize things from other countries,'' he said. ``They allow themselves to be seduced by unchecked materialism. They lose their own roots and long for distractions. Consequently, the emptiness brought on by this behavior explains many of the evils which beset young people.''

Among those evils, the pope said, are alcohol, drugs and ``prostitution hidden under different guises.'' Such signs of alienation, he said, lead to a ``desire to escape and to emigrate'' - a reference to another painful subject on an island that has seen hundreds of thousands of people flee their country for political and economic reasons.

In a separate message that was not read at the Mass on Friday but will be distributed by the Cuban church, he urged young people to return to the Catholic faith that had once been dominant in Cuba - ``a faith often learned on the knee of your mothers and grandmothers during the last few decades when the church's voice seemed silenced.''

According to the Vatican's estimates, 43 percent of Cuba's 11 million people are Catholic, although many of those stopped practicing their religion after 1959, when Fidel Castro's revolution stifled the church.

Boosting the influence of the church and restoring some of the rights it has lost under communism are perhaps the chief goals of the pope's visit, which has been sought by the Vatican for the past 10 years. But so far, John Paul has avoided any confrontation with Castro's government, choosing to spread his message through more subtle means.

In a commentary Friday, Granma, the Cuban Communist Party daily, suggested that the government is willing to allow the church to expand its activities. The newspaper acknowledged that families do face serious problems and for the first time said religious organizations can go beyond administering to the faithful to address the social needs of the population. This was taken to mean that the government might now be ready to favor the church's request to open its own schools and expand its social service network.

The pope Friday delivered his first public critique of the U.S. embargo of Cuba, a policy the Catholic Church has consistently opposed, in Cuba and elsewhere, on the grounds that economic sanctions hurt people more than governments.

But his reference to the embargo - blamed by Castro for his country's impoverished condition - was again in the context of a call to the Cuban people to take control of their fate.

The answer to Cuba's future, he said, is not ``to be sought only in structures, resources and in institutions, in the political system, or the effects of economic embargoes, which are always deplorable because they hurt the most needy. These are all part of the answer, but they do not touch the heart of the problem.''

John Paul returned to Havana on Friday night for a meeting with cultural leaders at the University of Havana, where Castro was on hand to deliver an official greeting and then sat in the front row, listening attentively to the pope.

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PHOTO (Color) Pope John Paul II embraces a Cuban girl in Camaguey after delivering his remarks Friday at a Mass dedicated to the nation's youth.

Associated Press