Alocution of S.E.R. Cardinal Juan de la Caridad García, Archbishop of Havana

By: Archbishop of Havana, Cardinal Juan de la Caridad García

Sunday, August 30, 2020.

Thanks to all those who make possible this radio broadcast of Sunday, August 30, the day of the start of the Ninth to Our Lady of Charity, Mother and Patron of Cuba, we turn to her praying:

Under your protection we welcome you, Holy Mother of God, do not give up the supplications we address to you in our needs, rather, deliver us from all danger, glorious and blessed Virgin.

The Word of God tells us who is the Virgin Mary of Charity:

An Israelite girl, extraordinarily religious, pure and fulfilling her duties. He received a warning from God: “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found grace before your God and you will conceive and bear a son, whom thou shaed jesus.”

This Jesus is the Messiah-Savior, expected by God’s people for centuries. He is the “son of God made man,” and announced by the Prophets.

Mary, aware that her cousin Elizabeth, now older, was pregnant with what was to be John the Baptist, hastily set off for Ain Karin to help her.

Her cousin Elizabeth received her thus: “Blessed art thou among the women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, blessed art thou that thou hast believed that what has been told to you from the Lord shall be fulfilled.”

Mary then praised and thanked God with a canticle we call The Magnificat, because that is how it begins in Latin.

Our Lady saw her Son born in a very poor way, in a cave. He took him to the Temple to introduce him to the Lord God. There an old man, Simeon, full of joy at seeing the child, exclaimed:

Now, Lord, you can let your servant go in peace, according to your word, because my eyes have seen salvation, which you have prepared before all peoples. Light to enlighten the nations and glory of your people.

(Song)

With the pain and joy of every mother, but accepting God’s will with peace, Mary saw one day that Jesus was leaving her side.

Jesus went to fulfill his mission: To proclaim the Kingdom of God. One day, referring to Mary, He said:

“My mother and my brethren are the ones who hear the Word and keep it.”

When Mary was witnessing the death of her Son on the Cross, He told her, showing the disciple John, “Woman, behold your Son.”

In that disciple of Christ we were represented all the men of mankind. From that moment on, the Virgin Mary is our Mother.

Our Lady knew the wonderful news that Christ had risen. He had lived again forever to take us all with God the Father.

The Virgin Mary stands with God the Father and his Son, Jesus Christ, and from there she intercedes for us so that we may follow Christ in this life and then, at the end of time, we can meet with her and all the saints to sing eternal praises to God.

She continues to play her role as Mother while present in many peoples in a thousand ways. In Cuba we venerate it under the title of the Virgin Mary of Charity.

What is Charity? The Apostle Paul describes it to us like this: 1st Corinthians, chapter 13.

That’s how Our Lady lived. That’s how you must live that you’re his devotee. True devotion leads to imitation. To be a son is to look like her. The son looks like his Mother…

(Song)

Juan Moreno tells us what he lived in the Bay of Nipe in 1612:

In the place of the Mines of Santiago del Prado, on April 1, 1687, Mr. Bonifacio Juan Ortiz Montajo de la Cámara, Cura Rector of the parish of this place… he brought Captain Juan Moreno to appear, from whom he was sworn in by God and a Cross, according to law, promised to tell the Truth of what he knew and asked him.

He was asked the following:

– What’s your name, where’s it natural from? How old are you, state and trade?

My name is Juan Moreno, black, slave, natural of this place and captain of this place, and I am eighty-five years old and married.

Asked, he declared what he knows in relation to the appearance of Our Lady of Charity and Remedies, he said:

Being ten years old, he was as a rancher of the Bay of Nipe, which is in the band of the north of this island, in the company of Juan and Rodrigo de Hoyos, natural Indians, who were going to take salt and having ranched in French Caye, which is in the middle of this Bay of Nipe, and then in good weather go to the salt flats , and already being a morning the sea calm, came out of said French Caye, before the sun came up, the two, Juan and Rodrigo de Hoyos and the declarant.

Embarked on a canoe for saline bliss and departing from French Caye, I saw a white thing on the foam of the water, which we did not distinguish what it could be and getting closer it seemed to birds and dried branches, but said those Indians look like a girl. And in these speeches, arrived, we recognized and saw the image of the Blessed Virgin, with the Child Jesus in his arms, on a small tablet, and on that tablet, large letters, which Rodrigo de Hoyos read to them and said: I AM THE VIRGEN OF CHARITY.

And being his clothes, we admired that they weren’t wet.

In this full of joy and joy, taking only three thirds of salt, we came for the Hato de Barajagua, where Miguel Galán, mayoral of said herd and they told him what was going on, having found the Lady of Charity, and the mayoral saying, very happy, and without dilation, then sent Antonio Angola with the news of this Lady to Captain Francisco Sánchez de Moya , who managed the mines of that place, so that he would arrange what was to be done and while the news arrived they put in the house of housing said herd, an Altar of boards and in it the Blessed Virgin with light on.

The said Captain Francisco Sánchez de Moya sent orders to the majorist saying Miguel Galán to see a house of said herd and to put the Blessed Virgin of Charity there, and to always have it with light. And for this he sent him a copper lamp, made the house covering with guano fenced with palm boards and placed on his Altar this divine Lady.

(Testimony of Juan Moreno, eyewitness to the find, File of the Indies, Spain).

(Song)

Who asked Pope Benedict XV to have our Lady of Charity be Mother and Patron of Cuba?

His Holiness Benedict XV.

HOLY FATHER:

Those who subscribe, children of the Holy Roman Apostolic Catholic Church, to His Holiness humbly expose:

That they are members of each other, of the Cuban Liberating Army, title that constitutes the timbre of our greatest glory, by being synthesized in it, the supreme good of the Freedom and Independence of our Homeland; that together with this title, we hold another, which is to belong to the Roman Apostolic Catholic Church, in whose bosom we were born, under their precepts we live and according to them we want to cease to exist; and these two titles make today, gathered in the Copper Village, where the Sanctuary of the BLESSED VIRGIN of CHARITY is located, and bequeathed reverently at its altar, we agree to go to His Holiness to carry out the most beautiful of our hopes and the fairest of the aspirations of the Cuban soul, declaring Patron of our young Republic to the Blessed Virgin of Copper Charity , and a precept for Cuba, the day that bears its Most Holy name, september 8.

 

They could neither the chances of war nor the work to deliver our livelihood, to extinguish the faith and love that our Catholic people profess to that venerated Virgin; and on the contrary, in the heat of fighting and in the greatest vicissitudes of life, when death was closest or nearest despair, always emerged as a dissipating light of all danger or as a comforting dew for our souls, the vision of that Cuban Virgin par excellence, Cuban for the origin of her secular devotion, and Cuban because this is how our unforgettable mothers loved her , so blessed are our loving wives and thus proclaimed by our soldiers, praying before her for the attainment of victory and for the peace of our forgotten dead; and I would accuse an shameful ingratitude on our part, that to the benefits that this exalted Virgin will produce us, remain inactive or mute, and do not raise our voices before the successor of St. Peter, so that it may be interpreted of the feelings of the Catholic people of Cuba and those of her Liberator Army who profess the religion of our ancestors, and using the faculties of which it is endowed , declare, prior to the corresponding formalities, as Patron of the Republic of Cuba to our Lady of Charity of Copper, and of ecclesiastical feast in her on the day she bears her holy name.

Therefore, to His Holiness we humbly plead, to serve benign access to our request.

Copper Village at twenty-four September of one thousand nine hundred and fifteen.

(And they follow the signatures of officers, classes, and soldiers of the Liberator Army)

In these nine days of praise and prayers to Our Lady of Charity, she invites us to live like her children and tells us in the Letter to the Romans, chapter 12, verses 9 to 21.

-Say the names of some mambises who wrote to Pope Benedict XV.

– Which President of Cuba prayed before the Shrine to our Lady of Copper Charity?

Answer 78624000. We will give you a rosary with guidance to pray.

Sweet mother, Virgin of Charity, don’t walk away, your view of me don’t go away.

Come with me everywhere and just never leave me.

And since you protect me as much as you are a true mother, make the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit bless me. Amen.

(Song)

Below we offer in full the allocution of the Cardinal and Archbishop of Havana, Archbishop Juan de la Caridad García.

Be the first to comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.


*