Cuba's Catholic Church reacted with "great joy" at the Vatican's announcement that Pope Benedict XVI is planning a visit to the island next year.
There was no immediate comment from Cuba's communist government.
A Vatican spokesman said Pope Benedict would visit Cuba and Mexico in the spring of 2012, noting that Communist-ruled Cuba "wanted to see the pope very much".
"This announcement of the presence of the Holy Father (in Cuba) in the jubilee year is a great joy for all Catholics and all Cubans," Havana Archdiocese spokesman Orlando Marquez told AFP.
"It is something we have been looking forward to, that the visit is made during the jubilee year 2012 for the 400th anniversary of the appearance of the image of the Virgin of Charity, the patroness of Cuba," Mr Marquez added.
The Vatican in recent days instructed its envoys to Cuba and Mexico to inform "the highest religious and political leaders in the two countries that the pope is examining a concrete project to visit," Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardo said in a statement.
Cuba is traditionally Catholic, but over the centuries it has embraced several syncretic beliefs, mainly of African origins brought to the island by slaves who worked on the sugar plantations.
A papal visit to Cuba would be the first by a pontiff since 1998, when John Paul II made the maiden papal voyage to the island.
His historic visit eased the strains that marked the four decades of ties between the Catholic Church and Fidel Castro's vehemently atheist Communist government.
The regime was deeply suspicious of organised religion, and imposed limitations on religious worship, but by the 1990s the government's approach grew more conciliatory.
Last year saw the initiation of an unprecedented dialogue between Fidel's brother Raul Castro, who took over as president four years earlier, and Cuba's Cardinal Jaime Ortega.
The talks led to the eventual release of 130 political prisoners, and the church emerged as a key intermediary in the regime's transition from strict communism to a single-party system incorporating market-oriented reforms.
Earlier this year a famed statue of the Virgin of Charity embarked on a national pilgrimage - the first since the 1959 revolution - and is now being taken to hundreds of locations in Havana after months travelling the countryside.
According to Cuban lore, an image of the Virgin of Charity is said to have appeared floating in the sea off the island's northeast in 1612, and over the centuries she has become a source of popular devotion among Cubans.