Cuba’s government ruled out political change in the communist island as Pope Benedict XVI, who is visiting the country, urged them to look for alternatives to Marxism and said he was praying for those people who’ve been denied freedoms.

“In Cuba, there won’t be political reform,” Marino Murillo, vice president of the Council of Ministers, told reporters in front of a poster of the pope today in Havana. The Caribbean nation “is in the process of carrying out the Cuban economic model that will make our socialism sustainable.”