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Feature News | Tuesday, April 17, 2012

Miami bids farewell to its 'living saint'

Father Richard Vigoa places the Book of the Gospels atop the casket of Bishop Agustin Roman at the start of the funeral Mass.

Photographer: MONICA LAUZURIQUE | FC

Father Richard Vigoa places the Book of the Gospels atop the casket of Bishop Agustin Roman at the start of the funeral Mass.

Crowds cheer and pray for Bishop Agustin Roman at Calle Ocho (S.W. Eighth Street) and S.W. 13th Avenue, in front of a monument to Bay of Pigs veterans. Angelina Jenkins Lopez kneels while Marianna Paz holds a rosary and framed picture of Bishop Roman.

Photographer: MONICA LAUZURIQUE | FC

Crowds cheer and pray for Bishop Agustin Roman at Calle Ocho (S.W. Eighth Street) and S.W. 13th Avenue, in front of a monument to Bay of Pigs veterans. Angelina Jenkins Lopez kneels while Marianna Paz holds a rosary and framed picture of Bishop Roman.

MIAMI — To his fellow priests, he was a father. To the lost sheep of exile, he was a pastor. To those who came to the Shrine of Our Lady of Charity, he was the ever-present priest, who never said no to a request for confession or a plea for a blessing.

The English-speaking world discovered him in 1987, when, armed only with a rosary, he walked into two federal prisons being held by rioting Mariel detainees and literally disarmed them with an Our Father.

In Miami, we knew him all along as Monseñor Román, our living saint.

Father Juan Rumin Dominguez, rector of the Shrine of Our Lady of Charity, sings the Cuban national anthem with the crowds gathered at Calle Ocho (S.W. Eighth St.) and S.W. 13th Ave., to pay final tribute to Bishop Agustin Roman.

Photographer: MONICA LAUZURIQUE | FC

Father Juan Rumin Dominguez, rector of the Shrine of Our Lady of Charity, sings the Cuban national anthem with the crowds gathered at Calle Ocho (S.W. Eighth St.) and S.W. 13th Ave., to pay final tribute to Bishop Agustin Roman.

Bishop Agustín Román, Miami’s retired auxiliary bishop, died at age 83, after suffering from a weak heart for two decades. It finally gave out early in the evening of April 11, as he prepared to give catechesis at the hall named in his honor, next to the Marian shrine whose construction he spearheaded — a shrine that became an icon for Cuban exiles and a place of solace and prayer for immigrants and refugees from every other nation in the Americas.

As soon as people heard news of his death, they began coming to the shrine to pray and cry for him. For more than 48 hours, day and night, thousands lined up to view his body and pay their last respects. Hundreds lined up again April 14 along S.W. Eighth Street — Miami’s famed Calle Ocho — as his funeral procession, and the pilgrim image of Our Lady of Charity, made their way from the shrine to St. Mary Cathedral for his funeral Mass.

Described as both “a man of God and a man of Cuba,” Bishop Román embodied the best of both: He was universally admired by priests and laity for his genuineness, his simplicity, his prayerfulness and his humility. And he was universally admired by Cubans for his patriotism — a passionate love of country but a passion bereft of shrillness. Hurt, yes, anger, no; resentment, no; and charity, always.

Bishop Agustin Roman's remains are carried into St. Mary Cathedral for the funeral Mass.

Photographer: MONICA LAUZURIQUE | FC

Bishop Agustin Roman's remains are carried into St. Mary Cathedral for the funeral Mass.

His faith resembled the royal palms of his native land: tenaciously resistant to the buffeting winds of life, and always striving toward heaven. He described himself as “desterrado” — literally, uprooted — from his homeland. Yet except for a brief visit to the Haitian and Cuban refugees detained in Guantanamo in 1994, he never returned. 

His reasoning was simple: He had been expelled along with 130 others back in 1961 simply because they were priests. He had never renounced his priesthood, and the government that expelled him had not renounced its ways.

Yet he never failed to welcome Cuban bishops and priests to the shrine. He never failed to help the Cuban Church or rejoice with its people at the visits of two popes. He even described his own journey to exile — a month-long sea voyage from Cuba to Spain, with only one change of clothes and no passport — as a “spiritual retreat” led by Havana’s auxiliary Bishop Eduardo Boza Masvidal, who had told his fellow voyagers: “God, for some reason, wants this Cuban Church to be missionaries to the world.”

The afternoon of his death, Bishop Román was officially notified of the very good news he had been waiting for: the cause of canonization for Bishop Boza, who later became auxiliary bishop in Los Teques, Venezuela, had been approved to go forward by the diocesan bishop. Bishop Boza is now a Servant of God.

A few days earlier, on Easter Sunday, the Vatican also announced that the cause of Father Felix Varela, a Cuban patriot and exile who wound up ministering to Irish immigrants in New York at the turn of the 19th century, also was moving forward. Father Varela has been declared venerable by the pope.

It had indeed been a “three weeks of great intensity” as Archbishop Thomas Wenski said in his homily at the funeral Mass, recounting, in addition to the papal visit to Cuba and the Varela announcement, the countless hours that Bishop Román had spent in the confessional during Holy Week. 

He called Bishop Román a man who, like the Venerable Varela, “understood that he was not less of a patriot for being a Catholic and not less of a Catholic for being a patriot.” 

Archbishop Wenski had known Bishop Román since the 1970s, when he was a seminarian assigned to St. Benedict Parish in Hialeah. The bishop had taught him how to evangelize: by taking Mary’s image through the streets, and inviting people to pray the rosary. The model was followed all of last year by Cuba’s bishops, who used the motto: “To Jesus through Mary: Charity unites us.”

Visibly moved during the Mass and while preaching the homily, Archbishop Wenski noted that Bishop Román spent his last hours “the same way he spent his entire life: evangelizing, preaching the Gospel. He was what he should have been: a friend of the poor, the sick, the imprisoned, the exile and the immigrant. … He was light; he was fire. His passion for evangelization, for catechesis, was never about making people follow him but rather to lead them to Jesus.”

Back in 1987, when the Mariel detainees, facing either indefinite detention here or immediate deportation back to Cuba, had rioted in Oakdale, La., and Atlanta, they had asked to speak to a Cuban bishop who had kept in touch with them and their families via letters. One of their handwritten signs referred to him as Bishop San Román, a combination of the name of the two Cuban bishops in the U.S. at the time: Bishop Roman and Bishop Enrique San Pedro of Brownsville, Texas.

The detainees might not have been far off the mark. 

Shouts of “Santo subito” were heard as Bishop Román’s remains made their last trip through Miami’s Calle Ocho. And those who attended his funeral Mass at St. Mary Cathedral — bishops, priests, religious and laity — stood up and applauded for two minutes when Archbishop Wenski repeated the words he had said upon hearing the news of Bishop Román’s death: 

“The Archdiocese of Miami has lost a great evangelizer who tirelessly preached the Gospel to all. And the Cuban nation has lost a great patriot. Bishop Roman was the Felix Varela of our time.”
Bishops from Cuba and Florida take part in the funeral Mass for Bishop Agustin Roman. From left: Bishop Mario Mestril of Ciego de Avila, Bishop Emilio Aranguren of Holguin, Bishop Frank Dewane of Venice, Bishop John Noonan of Orlando, Bishop Felipe Estevez of St. Augustine, Bishop Robert Lynch of St. Petersburg and Archbishop Dionisio Garcia of Santiago de Cuba.

Photographer: MONICA LAUZURIQUE | FC

Bishops from Cuba and Florida take part in the funeral Mass for Bishop Agustin Roman. From left: Bishop Mario Mestril of Ciego de Avila, Bishop Emilio Aranguren of Holguin, Bishop Frank Dewane of Venice, Bishop John Noonan of Orlando, Bishop Felipe Estevez of St. Augustine, Bishop Robert Lynch of St. Petersburg and Archbishop Dionisio Garcia of Santiago de Cuba.

Comments from readers

Julio Cesar Torrente - 04/17/2012 10:37 PM
He was and will always be a Priest's Priest. Very few Men have that Aura That Monsegnior had when you were around him...He gave you Peace, Comfort and always had the right words to make everyone welcome...He will be missed, but not forgotten. RIP Monsenor Roman - A Saint of our Time.

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