Cuba’s Catholic primate offered an appeal for forgiveness and reconciliation in a sermon that was broadcast on state television as the island’s Communist government treated Good Friday as an official holiday for the first time in half a century.

“Without forgiveness there cannot be healthy interpersonal relations, nor family life, nor social coexistence, nor reconciliation between human groups, nor within peoples, but how hard it is for us to forgive,” Cardinal Jaime Ortega said from Havana Cathedral.