One cannot imagine two more disparate characters meeting and being cordial to each other than Pope Benedict XVI and Fidel Castro: the former being a pious and highly educated leader of the Catholic Church; the latter being a Marxist-Lenin socialist whose administration oversaw human rights abuses. Nonetheless, no matter how different, human beings are human beings and have that as their common denominator.

The meeting took place in March 2012 in Havana. Pope Benedict XVI offers a brief account of their rendezvous in his book, Benedict XVI: Last Testament. The Supreme Pontiff was in his last full year as leader of the Catholic Church, while Castro was 85 and ailing. The Pope’s impression of Castro was that he had not “yet come out of the thought-structures by which he became powerful.” The word “yet,” however, contained a glimmer of hope because the longtime leader of Cuba had seen through “the convulsions in world history” and was pleased that “the religious question is being posed afresh.”

Cuba’s dictator asked Benedict XVI to send him some literature. Was Castro merely being diplomatic or was he genuinely interested in Christianity?

We, of course, will never know, but his request remains intriguing. At any rate, Benedict XVI sent him a copy of his 1970 book, Introduction to Christianity, a most appropriate work for this occasion. The Holy Father did not consider Castro the type of person who would be likely to undergo a “major conversion,” but believed that since he was keenly aware that so much had gone wrong, he was prepared to look at things in a different way.

Pope Benedict XVI was not naïve. He understood how extremely difficult it is for a Christian and a hardened atheist to engage in productive dialogue. He begins Introduction to Christianity by citing another thinker who shared this view, Søren Kierkegaard. The distinguished Danish existentialist was fond of using parables to impart his philosophy.

One of his parables features a clown who was already dressed and made up for his performance. A fire broke out in the circus and the manager dispatched the clown to go into the village and get help, for there was a real danger that the fire would quickly spread and engulf the village itself. The villagers, however, mistook the clown as an advertising agent for the circus. The more the clown pleaded with the villagers the harder they laughed. Given his clown costume, he had no credibility. They thought he was playing his part splendidly, until it was too late for help and the village was burned to the ground.

“I think that’s just how the world will come to an end,” said Kierkegaard, “to general applause from wits who believe it’s a joke.”

For Pope Benedict XVI as well as Kierkegaard, Christianity is no joke. But how can it be communicated? How can it protect itself against gross misinterpretation?

In the clown parable, the clown cannot communicate with the villagers. The result is disaster. The villagers fail to recognize their commonality with the clown. A Jewish parable makes the same point.

Martin Buber tells the story of a nonbeliever who paid a visit to a very learned rabbi. His intent was to convince the rabbi, through argumentation, of the reasonableness of atheism. When he arrived at the rabbi’s home, he found his would-be adversary walking up and down with a book in his hand, wrapped in thought.

Suddenly he stopped, looked at his new arrival, and said, “But perhaps it is true after all.” The doubter opposed the rabbi with all his strength, but the “perhaps” echoed back at him and broke his resistance. There is a “perhaps” in all of us.

Benedict XVI commented on this parable that “both the believer and the unbeliever share, each in his own way, doubt and belief, if they do not hide away from themselves and from the truth of their being.”

Neither can entirely escape from either doubt or belief. The believer has his doubts and the doubter cannot rid himself of the temptation to believe. If Castro read the first 21 pages of Introduction to Christianity he could have found Pope Benedict XVI to be his brother and a meaningful dialogue could ensue.

Benedict was Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger when he wrote the book. As he reiterates, “Just as the believer knows himself to be constantly threatened by unbelief, which he must experience as a continual temptation, so for the unbeliever faith remains a temptation and a threat to his apparently permanently closed world.”

St. Thérèse of Lisieux grew up in a thoroughly religious atmosphere. Yet, this saint, who was virtually cocooned in religious security, had troubling temptations to unbelief: “I am assailed by the worst temptations of atheism,” she acknowledged.

On the other hand, famous novelist William Somerset Maugham lived as a confirmed agnostic until he faced death, when he was assailed by a powerful temptation to believe in a God who would judge him. He summoned a friend to reassure him that God did not exist.

We are all human beings, cut from the same cloth, so to speak. We drift apart, however, and lose sight of our essential ambiguity. We are neither beings of pure faith nor beings of pure doubt. We are a mixture of each, in varying proportions.

If Pope Benedict XVI and Fidel Castro can have a civil conversation with each other, there is a spark of hope for any two human beings, no matter how much they differ culturally and personally, to engage in meaningful dialogue with each other.