From Translating Cuba:
The New Archbishop Of Havana Confesses To Being “Scared”
14ymedio, Zunilda Mata, Havana, 22 May 2016 –In a packed cathedral with screens showing the mass for those who couldn’t enter the temple, Havana’s new Archbishop, Juan de la Caridad Rodriguez, took possession of his new post this Sunday. The successor to Jaime Ortega y Alamino delivered a homily in which he acknowledged he was “scared” the face of so much responsibility.
“You will understand that I’m scared” and “do not understand the mystery of why I’m here,” said the prelate who also enumerated his wishes that Cubans might “live in peace, eat in peace, work and study in peace, and die in peace.. For which “we dream that no one touches anyone, no one hits anyone, no one, nobody hurts anyone.”
A multitude waited for García Rodríguez from the early hours of the morning in the vicinity of the church. At the front door of the Cathedral Cardinal Ortega y Alamino awaited him, and he opened the ceremony with the crozier in his hands, subsequently handing it over to the new archbishop. On June 29 Pope Francisco will deliver to him in Rome the pallium, a liturgical ornament appropriate to his status.
For Marcia, 66, “it begins a new era for our church and I hope he will bring harmony and respect,” she told this newspaper. Christian and very attentive to ecclesiastical life, the woman notes that “there are high expectations among those who frequently come to this church and people have received the appointment with joy.”…
…Born in 1948, the new archbishop of Havana was appointed priest in 1972 and joined the parish of Morón and Ciego de Avila. He was also pastor of Jatibonico and Florida, as well as the founder and director of the School for Missionaries in the diocese of Camagüey, for which was named archbishop in 2002.
Garcia has stressed that he expects his episcopate to serve to increase the dialogue with the Cuban government, so that “the Church can be present in spaces that belong to them, such as education, the media and prison ministry.”
Read the whole article HERE
So Wenski attended this event. If only he were similarly attentive to other things, but then again, it’s not as if Cuban Catholics in his domain have made that, uh, advisable, not to say necessary. In that respect, as Rayarena has commented here before, I’m afraid Mexican-Americans are considerably more, uh, effective–though it certainly helps (a lot) to have fashion and “correctness” on one’s side. Still, Cubans are too slack, and always have been.
The “eyes turned heavenward” look was a specialty of Guido Reni, a major Italian Baroque painter, who typically used it in religious works to very good effect. A profane, not to say obscene, travesty of that is very well illustrated by that photo of Ortega and Castro II (who’s neither president nor general, and may well not even be a Castro). Lord have mercy.