The Archbishop of San Cristobal de La Habana, Monsignor Juan de la Caridad Garcia Rodriguez, will be proclaimed Cuba’s new cardinal on October 5, announced Pope Francis.
The Supreme Pontiff reported on the upcoming College of Cardinals in the Vatican and announced the names of the new Cardinals this Sunday, after the Angelus prayer in St. Peter’s Square.
Garcia Rodriguez replaced Cardinal Jaime Ortega, who recently passed away, as archbishop of the archdiocese of San Cristobal de La Habana in 2016.
Born in Camagüey in 1948, the prelate began his philosophical and theological studies at the San Basilio Magno seminary in El Cobre, on the outskirts of Santiago de Cuba, and completed his preparation at the San Carlos and San Ambrosio seminary in Havana.
In 1972 he was ordained priest in the parish church of Nuestra Señora de la Candelaria, in Moron city, in the Cuban province of Ciego de Avila; in 1997 he was appointed auxiliary bishop of Camagüey; and in 2002 he became archbishop of the archdiocese of Camagüey.
In February 2007, he was appointed by Pope Benedict XVI as a member of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace.
The new Cuban Cardinal will be one of the ten new cardinal electors in a future conclave, while the other three prelates will be members of the College of Cardinals, but for age reasons they will not be able to vote in the next council for the election of the Supreme Pontiff. (PL)
