‘This puts in perspective what's really important’

By Tom Tracy - Florida Catholic

MIAMI | By now, most Catholics know that 2025 is a Jubilee Holy Year, which began on Christmas Eve 2024 with the opening of the Holy Door at St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican.

But few may know that standing by to assist the many pilgrims and visitors to the Vatican during the Holy Year are members of the Order of Malta, an ancient and sovereign chivalrous entity tracing its roots back to its presence in the Holy Land in 1048.

Some of the Order of Malta volunteers in Rome this year have been, or will yet include, South Florida Catholics who belong to the Cuban Association of the Order of Malta, a regional chapter of the lay religious order that traces its roots to Cuba but was later reconstituted in South Florida following the tumultuous Cuban Revolution that forced millions of Cubans into exile.

“The Order of Malta has been mandated to volunteer at the four major basilicas in Rome with their Holy Doors. We take care of medical emergencies because (pilgrims) are outside in the heat and those lines are miles long,” said Jose J. Centurion, a cardiologist in Coral Gables, a member of the Order of Malta since the 1990s, and current president of the Cuban Association.

Centurion told The Florida Catholic that, along with his wife, the couple was accustomed to taking annual adventure vacations around the world, including sports fishing and skiing trips, during their free time.

But in the late 1990s, they had a change of heart and began to apply themselves to medical mission projects abroad and at home.

Eventually, they formally merged their volunteer activities with those of the Cuban Association of the Order of Malta. These projects include providing volunteer service to a hospital in the Dominican Republic, a soup kitchen at St. John Bosco Parish in Miami, a free health clinic for the poor, St. John Bosco Clinic at Corpus Christi Parish also in Miami, and a home for children with special needs and disabilities in Guyana, South America.

The Order includes both Knights and Dames from around the world. Its official name is the Sovereign Military Hospitaller Order of St. John of Jerusalem of Rhodes and Malta. But the group is referred to informally as simply the Knights of Malta.

Something unique to the Order: It has diplomatic relations with more than 100 countries (although not the U.S.) and permanent observer status at the United Nations. Its diplomatic posts are neutral, impartial, and nonpolitical, aimed only at supporting the Order’s charitable activities in those countries.

“We are not only a religious order, but we are also a sovereign entity and the only such one in the world, with 114 embassies and a seat at the United Nations,” Centurion said.

He is concerned that the rapid development of new upscale housing in downtown Miami will make it increasingly difficult for low-income residents to access healthcare – hence the importance of the clinical services at Corpus Christi and the soup kitchen at St. John Bosco.

“We save our city several million dollars a year through these services,” said Centurion, adding that undocumented migrants are charged double if they go to an emergency room in Miami. “That’s taxpayer money saved.” The Malta volunteers are also hoping to open an additional clinic in Homestead, in southern Miami-Dade County.

Jorge Echenique, a Urologist who has been a member of the Cuban Association of the Order of Malta since 2002 and a parishioner at Epiphany Church in Miami, is currently heading up the association’s medical missions to Santiago, Dominican Republic. The missions attract volunteer medical and support staff from universities and organizations around the U.S. during their twice-annual mission trips.

“The missions have changed my life; my family has been on them, and this puts in perspective what's really important in life: helping others. At least we are doing this little bit.” Echenique said. “This is one of the great activities that the association does.”

Some 85 individuals from various medical specialties and practices participate in the trips to Santiago, where local staff and volunteers coordinate busy schedules of surgeries, internal medicine, ultrasounds, pediatrics, urology, gynecology and other subspecialty services for an estimated 1,200 patients per mission trip.

“It is a wonderful experience in terms of helping all these people have a better standard of life and we are practicing medicine for the best reasons,” he said. “We take a lot of young people who get an experience of helping other people — we have Mass every day and they get reconnected to their faith.”

And it's not just Florida Catholics who participate. Medical trips to the Dominican Republic draw volunteers from Colorado, Illinois and Pennsylvania and include medical professionals from Protestant, Muslim and Jewish backgrounds.

Angel Gallinal, a parishioner at Epiphany, a Knight for eight years, is now the association’s secretary general. He notes that another charitable work of the Cuban Association is supporting a network of church-affiliated centers for senior citizens at some 60 sites across Cuba.

The centers – known as Comedores – operate and are run by the local parishes with the support of the country’s Conference of Catholic Bishops.

“These are essentially soup kitchens where the neediest (people) in Cuba go for a meal. Trying to do anything in Cuba is never easy but these are locations within existing parishes — so they are run and staffed by a combination of pastors and parish volunteers,” Gallinal said.

“The Church is a beacon of hope in situations where individuals have no one else to turn to for a hot meal.”

Miami Archbishop Thomas Wenski is the association’s head chaplain, along with several other priest chaplains from various parishes in South Florida. Additionally, one chaplain, Father Troadio Hernandez, is based in Cuba.

Three more chaplains are currently in formation to help keep pace with the association’s growth and the ongoing need for spiritual guidance.

The Cuban Association of the Order of Malta was established in Havana in 1952, revived in Spain in the 1980s, and reorganized in Miami in 1990. It started with 25 members “dispersed throughout the world,” according to its website, and now has 70 Knights, Dames, Donates and chaplains, the majority of whom reside in Miami, Florida.

In addition to the medical missions to the Dominican Republic and Haiti, the Cuban Association supports the elderly with dining facilities, in cooperation with the local Catholic Church, parish priests, and bishops.

“What unites everyone is their Cuban heritage or a special interest in the plight of the Cuban people - so we have members from diverse nationalities, including Haitian, Venezuelans, Colombians, British and, of course, individuals who are married to Cubans,” noted Gallinal.

On June 21 at 10 a.m., to commemorate the founder of the Order of Malta, St. John the Baptist, members will wear their formal robes and regalia to attend Mass at St. Mary Cathedral, which will be celebrated by Archbishop Thomas Wenski. This Mass is celebrated each year on the Saturday closest to the feast day, June 24.

On Sept. 8, the feast day of Our Lady of Charity, the patron saint of Cuba, members of the Order of Malta will lead the procession of the Virgin to Mass. This year, the Mass will be celebrated at the National Shrine of Our Lady of Charity in Biscayne Bay. 

TO KNOW MORE

• For more information about the Order of Malta’s humanitarian and medical work, visit its website: www.ordendemaltacuba.org.