Cuba’s Vicar General dies in Havana at 77

Monsignor Carlos Manuel de Céspedes García-Menocal, an outstanding figure in Cuba’s Roman Catholic Church, died suddenly today (Jan. 3) at the age of 77, a source in the Havana Archdiocese told the Spanish news agency Efe.

Céspedes died this morning of a thrombo-embolism. His body now lies in the church of Saint Augustin, where he was parish priest for several years, according to the Archdiocese’s spokesman, Orlando Márquez.

Cardinal Jaime Ortega, Archbishop of Havana, will conduct a funeral Mass at the parish church tomorrow Saturday (Jan. 4) prior to the burial.

Carlos Manuel de Céspedes was born in Havana on July 16, 1936. He was an essayist, writer and one of the most influential and best known personalities in the Cuban Catholic Church.

He bore with pride the name of his great-great-grandfather, Carlos Manuel de Céspedes, who declared the start of the war of independence from Spain on Oct. 10, 1869, and became known as the “Father of the Nation.”

His maternal ancestors also had a long history of participation in the nation’s social and political life.

Monsignor De Céspedes held doctorates in Law and Philosophy from the University of Havana and studied theology at the Gregorian Pontifical University in Rome, between 1959 and 1963, when he returned to the island.

He was ordained a priest on Dec. 23, 1961, in Rome. Upon his return, he became Prefect of Discipline at the Good Shepherd Seminary, where he had studied. He held that post until 1966.

Since then and until 1970, he was dean of the St. Charles and St. Ambrose Seminary, where he taught Sacred Writings.

He was Vicar General of the Havana Diocese and secretary of the Episcopal Conference, as well as a consultant for the Pontifical Secretariat for the Nonbelievers in Rome.

In 2006, he was accepted as a member of the Cuban Academy of the Spanish Language, becoming the third Catholic dignitary to join the Academy since its foundation in 1926.

Monsignor De Céspedes was a member of the editorial board of “Palabra Nueva” [New Word], the magazine of the Archdiocese of Havana, for which he wrote articles. In December 2013, he published his conference “The prolonged journey from ancient knowledge to modernity.”

Among his books are the novel “Once upon a time in Havana,” published in Spain in 1998, the collection of short stories “Stabs at one’s memory” (2001) and the biography of Father Felix Varela “Passion for Cuba and the Church.”

(Read “Vicar prefers socialism to ‘neoliberalism’” in Progreso Weekly, Dec. 4, 2013)