The Auxiliary Bishops of Havana II

Situation of the Church in Cuba

After the events in the Church of Charity in Havana and the expulsion of more than 130 priests on the ship Covadonga on September 17, 1961,1 the Cuban bishops did not comment more on the social, political and economic aspects of the Cuban revolutionary process. They chose to remain silent about it.2 They maintained an expectant attitude towards cuba’s future.
For its part, the changes operated by the Government were accelerated, radical and overwhelming for national life. While many Cubans were enthusiastic, another party did not sympathize with them. The Church would have to get used to developing her pastoral work in the midst of an ideologically divided Cuba.
From 1961 and during the following years the public activity of the Catholic Church was annulled by decision of the Government. The life of the Church was reduced only to the four walls of the temples and was therefore strictly cultural. The Protestant Christian ecclesial communities were equally fortunate. The luminous Cuban Catholic Action, which had developed outstanding lay apostolic work in the public life of the country, was seen with nothing to do, in addition to the exile and imprisonment of some of its militants. Catholic Action was slowly dying.
Religious communities were greatly decimated during all these years. However, they gave an admirable response of love to the Church, for they assumed in the pastoral field the direction of the temples that had run out of priests. They worked hard, very well and selflessly until the bodily exhaustion of not a few of their members.
If I could write in gold letters the names of those faithful women who without theological knowledge, but with a clear and rooted Catholic doctrine and morals bravely defended the chapels of the small towns and the Bateyes. They became the church’s reference point in those places where they lived. Many kept the key to temples and guarded them jealously, carefully cared for ornaments and sacred vessels, and gave catechesis and prepared children for First Communion. Supported by small groups of Catholics from these villages, these women nurtured liturgical celebrations when the priest came and even overcate the insults of angry mobs shouting slogans against the Church. On rare occasions they had to listen with blasphemy pain against God, Our Lady and the saints.
These women wardens of the chapels defended the church’s property against the illegalities of a state that was arbitrary about it. Interestingly, these chapels had been built by the contribution of the neighbors of the peoples in order to celebrate the worship of God: tombs, raffles and public collections gradually led to the temple being erected.
It’s been almost sixty years of these events. Unfortunately, the names of these Catholics are not remembered. The new generations are unaware of that stage of the Catholic Church in Cuba. Very few temples were lost and thanks to the good and faithful Christians, the Catholic Church remained in the village. If today new generations have occupied the banks and temples that the noble founders lovingly built, it is thanks to the faith and courage of these simple people. There were times when they bravedly confronted a government leader who claimed the key and surrender of the temple. And they didn’t turn him in. Glory to God for them!
Pope St. John XXIII withdrew his apostolic nuncio in Havana. For more than a decade the Vatican did not appoint ambassador to Cuba, but maintained its accredited diplomatic headquarters to the Cuban Government with an interim business manager at the helm of it, priest Msgr. Césare Zacchi. This man deserves a just recognition for his diplomatic and ecclesial work in the Church of those years. If the revolutionary government did not extremize its measures contrary to the Catholic Church in Cuba, it was partly due to Msgr. Zacchi.3 This singular diplomat sympathized with many of the orientations of the Cuban Revolution and admired its top leader Fidel Castro. Msgr. Zacchi’s central idea was to maintain the presence of the Catholic Church in Cuba, despite the great differences with the Government. For many, Mons Zacchi’s attitude was defensive.

Until 1965, attendance at Catholic temples was overflowing, as had not been seen before in the twentieth century. The baptismal books of that time testify to the astonishing number of baptized children. This was due to the rumor that ran for those years within the Cuban population: “they’re going to close the churches and the priests are going to throw them away.” The number of marriages celebrated by the Church did not decrease relative to the previous decade. Although catechesis outside the Church was suspended, children’s attendance in those organized within their spaces increased markedly. People felt good in temples, even though, in front of them, small groups of people insulted those who attended the different religious offices. From places near the temples, they placed horns that conveyed revolutionary hymns and marches while the cultural celebrations were held. The so-called street plans, with a large influx of children, were commonly organized very close to the churches.
Since 1961, Archbishop Evelio Díaz Cía, Archbishop of Havana, did not have the two auxiliary bishops assigned to him the previous year. Therefore, in 1964, Msgr. Zacchi managed the appointment of two new auxiliaries for the archdiocese, they were Msgr. Alfredo Llaguno and the Jesuit father Fernando Azcárate. Both had remained encouraging Catholic communities throughout this period previously reviewed.

Msgr. Alfredo Llaguno Canals (1902-1979)

He was born in Havana on December 12, 1902. He entered the Seminary San Carlos y San Ambrosio and, once he completed part of his studies, Msgr. Manuel Ruiz, the first Archbishop of Havana, sent him to his Doctorate of Theology in Rome. In the eternal city he was ordained a priest on October 28, 1928. On his return to Cuba he was appointed parish priest of the church of San Francisco de Paula and administrator of the deputy hospital,

in the neighborhood of La Vipera, where he remained until early 1977, when he was retired for health reasons. Still the neighbors of the town of Monaco remember him for his pastoral work. Baptisms, marriages, first communions, and blessings of houses demonstrate the work of your priesthood.
He served as master canon of the cathedral of Havana. For their beautiful oratory, in the bombastic style of that time, they requested it in many churches and civic activities before 1959. In the mid-1950s, Cardinal Manuel Arteaga asked the venerable Pope Pius XII to appoint Father Llaguno as monsignor. He was very close to the families of the presidents of the Republic from Gerardo Machado to Fulgencio Batista, although he did not take part in political activities.
Already a sexagenary, Msgr. Evelio Díaz, his great friend since the years of the Seminary, appointed him chancellor of the Archbishopric of Havana and subsequently asked the Pope as one of his two auxiliary bishops. Father Llaguno, as he liked to be called, was a man of the Church before the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965). His theological formation was typical of the twenties. Therefore, in the late forties he ceased to be professor of dogmatic theology at the Seminary of Havana.
During his six years as auxiliary bishop of Havana, he administered the sacrament of confirmation in many Catholic communities in the archdiocese. As has been said before, during this stage the influx of people into temples had increased markedly. In August 1968, together with five other Cubans, he attended the Second Conference of the Latin American Episcopate held in the Colombian city of Medellin. On February 10, 1970, when Msgr. Francisco Oves Fernández assumed the government of the Habanero ecclesial territory, Msgr. Llaguno did not continue as auxiliary bishop and was appointed administrator of the archbishopric.
When he retired as a parish priest he went to live with his family in a house near the parish of Monserrate, in Centro Habana. I went to that church every morning to celebrate Holy Mass. On August 20, 1979, he died at the Calixto García Hospital; his funerals were held in the parish of San Francisco de Paula with great public turnout. He was buried in the pantheon of bishops in Columbus Cemetery. His body, along with those of other bishops, was desecrated a few years ago. Currently, his remains are in the crypt of the church of the Holy Spirit, in Old Havana.

Msgr. Fernando de Azcárate and Freyde de Andrade (1912-1998)

He was born in Havana on October 27, 1912. He was the grandson of Don Nicolás de Azcárate, the owner of the firm located on today’s Avenida del Puerto, near the Cathedral, where José Martí worked on his return to Cuba in 1878. His childhood was spent in the neighborhood of Vedado and he studied at the Colegio de La Salle, located at the bottom of the parish of that town. He entered the University of Havana to study law. At the end of the third year of the race, Msgr. Enrique Pérez Serantes, then Bishop of Camaguey, convened a spiritual retreat of men in a hotel that he rented to that effect in the city of the Tinajones. There Azcárate decided his priestly vocation, as he once expressed to me: “rationally, and not sentimentally”. Thus he entered the novitiate of the Society of Jesus, in Oña, Spain, in the late twenties.
He always recognized that his vocation was Jesuit and he carried out his philosophical and theological studies with the clear aim of being a Jesuit priest. She never ceased to be a Jesuit, carried it in her soul, and in speaking she was perceived to oozing the spirit of the Company everywhere. After studying the Bachelor’s Degree in Philosophy and Theology at the Pontifical University of Comillas, Santander, Spain, he was ordained a priest in that country on July 25, 1950. He was almost thirty-eight years old.
Back in Cuba he was appointed spiritual director of the College of Bethlehem of Havana. At that time he studied and received his doctorate in Psychology at the Catholic University of St. Thomas of Villanueva in this city. Later, in the mid-1950s, he assumed the leadership of the Novitiate of the Society of Jesus located on the outskirts of the town of El Calvario, in Havana. This novitiate was housed in a magnificent building built in the 1940s to house two Jesuit institutions: novitiate and philosophy. At the time and until 1961 when he was nationalized by the revolutionary government, he was the best training center of the Society of Jesus in Spanish-speaking Latin America. Future Jesuits came here, not only from America, but also from Spain. Today that building is occupied by a military unit.
The province of the Antilles, of the Society of Jesus, was headquartered in Havana, and the provincial father resided there. In September 1961, some Jesuits were expelled on the ship Covadonga, including Father Ceferino Ruiz, who served as provincial father. Then the provincial seat of this religious community was moved to Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, and at the head of the thirty-something religious of the Order who remained in Cuba Father Azcárate was appointed; in this way he became the Superior of the Jesuits in Cuba and rector of the Church of the Sacred Heart of Jesus (Queen).
Like all the priests who worked on the island during those years, their work was feverish. He told me that in 1964 he was asked to preach the annual retreat of the clergy in Havana and then in El Cobre. He noted that the two dedas were attended by Msgr. Césare Zacchi, ad interin in charge of business at the Holy See in Cuba. Shortly the following he was called to the Nunciature and Msgr. Zacchi informed him that Pope St. Paul VI had appointed him auxiliary bishop of Havana. He refused to accept it, but Msgr. Zacchi told him that the Company’s general father had given permission. Azcárate reposed that I needed to consult him. Zacchi added that he could not consult him with any priest, except Father Diaz, Jesuit octogenarian. The next day, Azcárate accepted the proposition, as lamb brought to the slaughterhouse. Together with Msgr. Llaguno he was ordained bishop in the Cathedral of Havana on Sunday, May 17, 1964.
Unlike Msgr. Llaguno, Msgr. Azcárate was formed and professed the new Theology of the 1950s, prior to the Second Vatican Council. On the other hand, the Jesuit became bishop was, by nature, an open-minded man of open-minded psychology. All this made him the flag bishop of conciliatory renewal in the Cuban Church of the sixties. Until his death he was a lover of the Second Vatican Council. Azcárate knew the laity very well and trusted them very much. In addition, young priests, both diocesan and religious, sought in their person the spiritual director.

When he was appointed assistant to Msgr. Evelio Díaz he went to reside in the Archbishopric of Havana. He told me that during his six years as such he suffered greatly. He attended the Second General Conference of the Latin American Episcopate of Medellin in 1968 and on his return to Cuba wondered how the spirit, letter and pastoral and social reforms emanating from the Medellin conference to the Cuban Church of the late 1960s could be brought. The situation was atypical and therefore very scabous. Fidel Castro’s revolutionary model was carried out in leaps and bounds. So how to apply Medellin in Cuba? Msgr. Azcárate took the proposal to the Cuban Episcopal Conference, which included three other renewing bishops: José Domínguez, Adolfo Rodríguez and Pedro Meurice. In this way, he was in charge of asking Father Francisco Oves, Doctor of Sociology and expert advisor at the Conference of Bishops of Medellin, to write the pastoral communiqué of Cuban bishops published in April 1969.
Since being appointed bishop, Msgr. Azcárate served as secretary of the Episcopal Conference of Cuba. In the early 1970s he ceased in this position. From February 10 of this same year, Msgr. Francisco Oves was appointed Archbishop of Havana, after the resignation of Msgr. Evelio Díaz and by that date, Msgr. Azcárate did not continue as auxiliary bishop of the Havana seat, although he preserved the sacrament of the episcopal order. Overnight he was seen with the big question of what was he doing with his life? He was no longer a Jesuit, a vocation that defined his life and from which he had been taken out practically to force him to be auxiliary bishop. He was no longer an auxiliary bishop. How did it look? The Jesuit parents showed him a great fraternity and welcomed him into the residence of Villa San José in El Vedado. The archbishopric went to reside there.

Every day he was to celebrate mass from 7:30 a.m. to the Convent of the Siervas of Mary until in January 1971, Msgr. Oves entrusted him with the parish of Our Lady of Monserrate in Centro Habana. There he remained until 1987 when his bodily health did not allow him to perform parish offices.
I met him personally in early February 1972. That year, the parent rector of the seminary had requested him as a Latin teacher for the first year of that center. Azcárate was very well prepared to be a teacher of some of the subjects of Theology, Philosophy or Psychology; However, what the Church was asking of him at the time was to be a Teacher of Latin and to begin his classes because of the preliminary aspects of that language. He humbly accepted responsibility and took on the work of teaching students who did not have many motivations for learning. We laughed when not understanding, or better, not wanting to learn, the professor would tell us “toletes” or “polar bears”, and alluded that we were “asleep” or “half asleep”.
From his parish in Galiano and Concordia he went many times on foot to the seminary when his car was broken. Classes were four days a week on the last shift in the morning: torture for the teacher and students. The teacher’s service was then free. Many years have passed and as I examine the life of that bishop I conclude the humility experienced by him in the most difficult years of his life.

On Thursday of the first week of July 1979, on the occasion of the annual priestly coexistences of the clergy in El Cobre, it was reflected on the final document of the III Conference of the Latin American Episcopate, held in January of that year in the Mexican city of Puebla de Los Angeles. During the three days of study and reflections it was seen that this work did not progress in the face of its conclusions. Where was the problem? It was impossible to apply the results of the Puebla Conference to Cuban political, economic, social and ecclesial reality. Puebla was made for Latin America and not for the atypical situation in Cuba after twenty years of the triumph of the Marxist-Leninist revolution. In the midst of this debate, the plenary was reached on Thursday afternoon. That’s when Msgr. Azcárate asked for the floor. He got up from the desk and said, “I’m going to say a quixotada: let’s make a Cuban Puebla.” I don’t forget that meeting, even though it’s been forty years. The sexagenary Jesuit bishop wore a beige, long-sleeved guayabera. None of those present knew that the Jesuit father had just said the spark conducive to Cuban Ecclesial Reflection (REC), which, very shy and slow at the beginning, was gaining strength and arddo to the extent that he advanced to finish at one of the great events of the history of the Catholic Church in Cuba: the Cuban Ecclesial Encounter (ENEC) , held in Havana in February 1986. The initial idea of Msgr. Azcárate filled the Catholic faithful of the country with ecclesial hope. Thus, Msgr. Azcárate became “the father of rec”.
The bishop who participated in three sessions of the Second Vatican Council turned to the Cuban Church the fresh breath of this great ecclesial event. It seems to me that only he could do it, for as I said, he perspired the letter and spirit of Vatican II like none of the Cuban bishops attending that meeting. It can be said that it was the most conciliatory of the members of the Cuban episcopate at the time. This had a great impact on the implementation of conciliar documents in the archdiocese of Havana and the Episcopal Conference, of which he was its secretary.
Mons. Azcárate’s health was cracking as the REC progressed. In this way, the conduct of the Reflection passed to Msgr. Jaime Ortega, in February 1983. Meanwhile, Msgr. Azcárate advised the national catechesis commission. He was able to attend ENEC and vibrate at each of his meetings. The following year he resigned from the parish of Monserrate, to which he had surrendered in body and soul for sixteen years and went to reside in the Jesuit house of Villa San José. Grieving with various diseases, the Jesuits decided to transfer him to the infirmary of the Manresa-Altagracia house, located on the outskirts of the Dominican capital. It was the summer of 1990. He would no longer return to the beloved homeland, “although he never left Cuba”, as Cardinal Jaime Ortega expressed in the homily of the funeral of Msgr. Azcárate held on the afternoon of August 19, 1998 in the church of Reina. On October 31, 1994, I went to see him at his residence in Santo Domingo. He could no longer get out of bed; however, I received a slightly incorporated with a broad smile and a sense of embrace. As he said goodbye, he told me, “Tell Jaime that I am very pleased with his appointment as cardinal and that he deserves it” (the day before he had created Jaime Ortega Cardinal of the Church).
Death came to him at the place in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, on July 31, 1998. It is the day of St Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Society of Jesus. I discover on the date of his death the YES of God with which he crowned the life of this Jesuit. With his death, the arch of the great sacred speakers of the twentieth century of Cuban was closed: Msgr. Manuel Ruiz, Msgr. Evelio Díaz, Msgr. Ismael Testé4 and Msgr. Alfredo Llaguno. The homilies of Azcárate, unlike the previous ones, were characterized by a less bombastic style, although without losing vehemence and expressed more catechetically, accompanied them with expressive gestures of his hands that were born from his chest. Then there have been good preachers, but without reaching the height of those already mentioned.
Msgr. Azcárate is buried in the Jesuit religious cemetery located at the back of the Manresa-Altagracia house, which looks out to the Caribbean Sea. She left us a high example of love for the Church, of acceptance of the places where she placed it and of not critique of the decisions of the Cuban Episcopal Conference. Ω

Notes
1 See footnote 2 of “The Archbishop of Change”, in New Word, No. 284, December 2018, p. 23.
2 Refer to “Monsignor Evelio Díaz, the Martyr Archbishop”, in New Word, No. 281, September 2018, pp. 28-33.
3 Monsignor Césare Zacchi arrived in Cuba in early 1961 as business manager of the Holy See on the island. He was ordained bishop on December 12, 1967 at the Cathedral of Havana. In early 1975 he was appointed apostolic nuncio and, in July of that same year, promoted to president of the Academy forming vatican diplomatic staff. Retired in the early 1980s, he died in Rome in 1991.
4 Msgr. Ismael Testé was a parish priest of Avocado and after the Pillar, in Havana. Founder and director of the City of Children in Bejucal. For several years he was in charge of the radio and television Mass. He wrote a history of the Cuban Church in several volumes. He died in 1995, in San Antonio, Texas.