The papal visit, which begins today, comes nine months after the Vatican brokered an historic deal to normalise relations  between the two countries. Here we reveal the behind-the-scenes story At four o’clock on a December afternoon last year the car of the French ambassador Jean Men­delson bumped along a potholed road in old Havana and came to a stop in front of the colonial-style residence of the archbishop, Cardinal Jaime Lucas Ortega y Alamino. Mendelson had been called back to Paris and had come to say goodbye. The Frenchman describes himself as “an atheist of Jewish origin and Catholic culture” but he had become a regular churchgoer in Cuba, seeing it as a chance to meet ordinary people. Word had reached the archbishop about this unusual parishioner and t