Chavez to begin radiation therapy, may meet Pope

Venezuela's Hugo Chavez is due to begin radiation treatment on Sunday in Cuba, where he also could meet Pope Benedict in the latest high profile development as the president tries to fight off cancer and win re-election.
Chavez is returning to Havana a month after he had surgery there to remove a second malignant tumor from his pelvis. The treatment will take him off the political stage just as his election rival gears up a nationwide campaign tour ahead of the Oct. 7 vote.
The return of the socialist leader to the Communist-led island coincides with a rare visit to Cuba by the pope, and Venezuelans have been captivated by the possibility that Chavez, who says he has gained a new spiritual outlook on life since his illness, could have a private audience with him there.
Nelson Bocaranda, a pro-opposition Venezuelan journalist who has broken news on the president's cancer treatment in the absence of much official information, said his sources in Cuba and the Curia, the central governing body of the Roman Catholic church, told him the pope had agreed to meet Chavez.
"The meeting will be strictly private, without media coverage, and the only ones who will be present, in addition to the pope and Chavez, could be the Castros and the Venezuelan's daughters," Bocaranda wrote in his column on Sunday.
"No other relatives nor Venezuelan officials can be at the meeting, which took so much to organize. No representative of the Venezuelan bishops will be present in Cuba."
Bocaranda said his sources told him the Vatican's secretary of state, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, also could attend the talks, which were likely to be held at the Palace of the Revolution in Havana. Pope Benedict is ending a three-day tour of Mexico and is due to arrive in Cuba on Monday.
Little is known about what kind of cancer Chavez has, nor how serious it is, so big questions remain about his future.
His latest departure from Venezuela will stoke anxiety among supporters worried about his health, as well as fan persistent rumors of a nascent power struggle among his inner circle.
After three cancer operations in less than a year and four sessions of chemotherapy treatment, Chavez says he has been spiritually "reborn." He frequently invokes God and the spirits of the Venezuelan plains where he was born.
Chavez has dominated the nation's politics for the past 13 years and his illness has shocked voters across South America's biggest oil exporter in the run-up to the election.
Some question how fit he would be to govern if he won and the radiation therapy is expected to keep him from conducting the kind of man-on-the-street campaign that has worked so well in the past to help him drive forward his leftist "revolution." On Saturday, Chavez said the treatment would last four to five weeks but that he would return to Venezuela in a few days.