Juan de la Caridad García Rodríguez (born 11 July 1948) is a Cuban prelate of the

Catholic Church The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the List of Christian denominations by number of members, largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics Catholic Church by country, worldwid ...

who has served as Archbishop of Havana since 26 April 2016. He previously served as an Auxiliary Bishop of Camagüey from 1997 to 2002 and then as archbishop of that diocese from 2002 to 2016. He is a past president of the Cuban Conference of Catholic Bishops.

Pope Francis Pope Francis (born Jorge Mario Bergoglio; 17 December 1936 – 21 April 2025) was head of the Catholic Church and sovereign of the Vatican City State from 13 March 2013 until Death and funeral of Pope Francis, his death in 2025. He was the fi ...

raised him to the rank of

cardinal Cardinal or The Cardinal most commonly refers to * Cardinalidae, a family of North and South American birds **''Cardinalis'', genus of three species in the family Cardinalidae ***Northern cardinal, ''Cardinalis cardinalis'', the common cardinal of ...

on 5 October 2019.

Biography

He was born in Camagüey on 11 July 1948. He was a member of the first group of Cuban priests to be educated entirely in Cuba. He studied at Saint Basil the Great Seminary in El Cobre,

Santiago de Cuba Santiago de Cuba is the second-largest city in Cuba and the capital city of Santiago de Cuba Province. It lies in the southeastern area of the island, some southeast of the Cuban capital of Havana. The municipality extends over , and contains t ...

, and then at Saints Charles and Ambrose Seminary (now the Father Felix Varela Cultural Center) in Havana. He was

ordained Ordination is the process by which individuals are Consecration in Christianity, consecrated, that is, set apart and elevated from the laity class to the clergy, who are thus then authorized (usually by the religious denomination, denominationa ...

a priest on 25 January 1972. In the years after his ordination he worked in parishes that are now part of the Ciego de Ávila Diocese. In March 1997 he was named

auxiliary bishop An auxiliary bishop is a bishop assigned to assist the diocesan bishop in meeting the pastoral and administrative needs of the diocese. Auxiliary bishops can also be titular bishops of sees that no longer exist as territorial jurisdictions. ...

of Camagüey and was consecrated bishop in Camagüey's Our Lady of Mercy Church on 7 June 1997 by Adolfo Rodríguez Herrera, the bishop of Camagüey. He chose as his episcopal motto "Go and announce the Gospel". Camagüey became an archdiocese in late 1998 and he was named to succeed Herrera as archbishop in February 2002. He developed evangelization programs in which grandparents, who still remembered their education in Catholicism as children, taught the principles of Catholicism to their grandchildren. He also, with government permission, established prison ministries. García Rodríguez was the president of the First National Missions Assembly in Havana in 2006. He was elected president of the Cuban Conference of Catholic Bishops in 2006 and served until 2010. He represented Cuba at the fifth general assembly of Latin American and Caribbean bishops in Aparecida, Brazil, in 2007, which ended with the promulgation of the Declaration of Aparecida drafted by Cardinal Bergoglio of Buenos Aires (later Pope Francis). The Vatican named him a member of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace in February 2007. He participated in the 2014 sessions of the Synod on the Family. On 26 April 2016,

named him Archbishop of Havana to succeed Cardinal Jaime Lucas Ortega y Alamino who is a Cuban prelate of the Catholic Church. '' Granma'', the newspaper of the

Communist Party of Cuba The Communist Party of Cuba (, PCC) is the sole ruling party of Cuba. It was founded on 3 October 1965 as the successor to the United Party of the Cuban Socialist Revolution, which was in turn made up of the 26th of July Movement and Popu ...

, reported his appointment. He was installed on 22 May. On 5 October 2019, Pope Francis made him

Cardinal-Priest A cardinal is a senior member of the clergy of the Catholic Church. As titular members of the clergy of the Diocese of Rome, they serve as advisors to the pope, who is the bishop of Rome and the visible head of the worldwide Catholic Church. ...

of Santi Aquila e Priscilla. He was made a member of the Congregation for the Clergy on 21 February 2020 and of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America on 20 April 2020. He participated as a cardinal elector in the 2025 papal conclave that elected

Pope Leo XIV Pope Leo XIV (born Robert Francis Prevost, September 14, 1955) has been head of the Catholic Church and sovereign of the Vatican City State since May 2025. He is the first pope to have been born in the United States and North America, the fir ...

References

External links

Official Biography
{{DEFAULTSORT:Garcia Rodriguez, Juan 1948 births Living people Roman Catholic archbishops of Havana Cuban cardinals 20th-century Roman Catholic bishops in Cuba 21st-century Roman Catholic archbishops in Cuba Cardinals created by Pope Francis People from Camagüey Bishops appointed by Pope John Paul II Roman Catholic bishops of Camagüey Roman Catholic archbishops of Camagüey Cuban Roman Catholic bishops

Biography

See also

References

External links