Homily pronounced in the Eucharistic Celebration at the Arch-Diocese of Santiago de Cuba
January 24, 1998

1. Blissful the nation whose God is the Lord. (Salt 32, 12). We have sung with the psalmist that the happiness accompanies to the town that has to God like its Lord... More than five hundred years ago, when Christ's cross arrived at this Island, and with her its saving message, began a process that, fed by the Christian faith, has gone forging the characteristic features of this Nation. In the series of its illustrious men are: that soldier that was the first catechist and missionary of Macaca; also the first Cuban teacher that was the P. Miguel de Velázquez; the priest Esteban Salas, father of the Cuban music; the famous inhabitant of Bayamo Carlos Manuel de Cespedes, Father of the Homeland, the one which, prone to the feet of the Virgen de la Caridad, they began their fight for the freedom and the independence of Cuba; Antonio de la Caridad Maceo y Grajales whose statue presides over the square that today welcomes our celebration, to which his mother requested before the crucifix that surrendered until the end for the freedom of Cuba.

Besides these, there are many men and illustrious women that, moved by their unyielding faith in God, they chose the road of the freedom and the justice like bases of the dignity of their town.

2. It pleases me to be today in this Archdiocese, so famous, that has counted among their Shepherds to San Antonio María Claret. Above all, I direct my cordial greeting to Mons. Pedro Meurice Estíu, Archbishop of Santiago de Cuba and Prime of this Nation, as well as to the other Bishops, priests and deacons, committed in the extension of the Kingdom of God in this earth. I greet the religious and to the whole faithful people present here. I want to also direct a deferential greeting to the civil authorities that have wanted to participate in this Holy Mass and I thank them the borrowed cooperation for its organization.

3. In this celebration we will crown the image of the Virgen de la Caridad del Cobre. From her sanctuary, not far from here, the Queen and Mother of all the Cubans -without distinction of races, political options or ideologies -, it guides and it sustains, like in the past, the steps of their children towards the celestial Homeland, and it encourages them to live in such a way that always reign the authentic moral values that constitute the rich inherited spiritual patrimony of the adults in the society. To her, like her cousin Isabel did, we go grateful to tell her: Blissful you that have believed, because what has told you the Lord, it will be completed (Lc 1, 45). The secret of the true happiness of people is in these words and of the peoples: to believe and to proclaim that the Lord. has made marvels for us, and that his mercy arrives to his faithful of generation in generation. This convincing is the force that encourages the men and women that, even with sacrifices, they surrender unselfishly to the service of the other ones.

The example of readiness of María points us out the route to traveling. With Her the Church carries out its vocation and its mission, announcing to Jesus Christ and exhorting to make what He tells us; also building the universal fraternity in the one that each man can call Father to God.

4. as the Virgin María, the Church is Mother and Teacher in Christ's pursuit, light for the peoples, and dispatcher of the divine mercy. As community of all those baptized, it is also enclosure of pardon, of peace and reconciliation that opens her arms to all the men to announce to them the true God. With the service to the faith of the men and women of this lovely people, the Church helps them to progress for the way to the good. The evangelization works that go taking place in diverse atmospheres, as for example the missions in neighborhoods and towns without churches, they should be taken care and fomented so that they can be developed ,and to not only serve the Catholics, but to the whole Cuban people so that they knows Jesus Christ and love him. The history teaches that without faith the virtue disappears, the moral values are darkened, the truth, the life doesn't glow it loses its transcendental sense, and even the service to the nation can leave of being encouraged by the deepest motivations. To this respect, Antonio Maceo, the great oriental patriot, said: "Who doesn't love to God, doesn't love to the Homeland."

The Church calls to all to embody the faith in the own life, as the best road for the human being integral development, created to image and likeness of God, and to reach the true freedom that includes the recognition of the human rights and the social justice. To this respect, the lay ones Catholic, safeguarding their own identity to be able to be salt and ferment amid the society of which are part, is entitled the duty and the right of participating in the public debate in equality of opportunities ,and in dialogue attitude and reconciliation. Also, the well of a nation it should be fomented and offered by the own citizens through peaceful and gradual means. This way each person, enjoying freedom of speech, initiative capacity, and of proposal in the center of the civil society, and of the appropriate association freedom, will be able to collaborate efficiently in the search of the common good.

The Church, immersed in the society, doesn't look for any form of political power to develop its mission, but rather wants to be a fertile germ of common good to be present in the social structures. Looks in the first place to the human person and the community in which lives, knowing that his first road is the concrete man amid his necessities and aspirations. All that the Church claims by itself puts it to the man's service and of the society. Indeed, Christ gave him the task of taking his message to all the peoples, for that which needs a space of freedom and the enough means. Defending its own freedom, the

Church defends that of each person, that of the families, that of the diverse social organizations, alive realities that are entitled to an environment characteristic of autonomy and sovereignty (cf. Centesimus annus, 45). In this sense, the Christians and the Christian communities live deeply inserted in the life of their respective peoples and they are sign of the Gospel inclusive for their fidelity to their homeland, to their peoples, to the national culture, but always with the freedom that Christ has brought... The Church is called to give its testimony of Christ, assuming valiant and prophetic positions before the corruption of the political or economic power; not looking for the glory or the material goods; using its goods for the service of the poorest and imitating the simplicity of Christ's life (Redemptoris mission, 43).

5. When remembering these aspects of the mission of the Church, let us give thank God that has called us to be part of the same one. In her, the Virgin María occupies a singular place. Expression of this is the coronation of the worshipped image of the Virgen de la Caridad del Cobre. The Cuban history is fulfilled of wonderful samples of love to its Patron Saint to whose feet the native figures of the humble ones, two Indians and a brown one symbolize the rich plurality of this people. El Cobre, where her Sanctuary is, it was the first place of Cuba where the freedom was conquered for the slaves.

Dear faithful, never forget the big events related with your Queen and Mother. With the canopy of the family altar, Cespedes made the Cuban flag and went to be prostrated to the Virgin's feet before beginning the fight for the freedom. The brave Cuban soldiers, the "mambises", took on their chest the medal and the "measure" of her blessed image. The first act of free Cuba took place when in 1898 the General Calixto García troops of the prostrated to the feet of the Virgen de la Caridad in a solemn mass for the Mambisa Declaration of the Independence of the Cuban People. The diverse pilgrimages that the image has made for the towns of the Island, welcoming the yearnings and hopes, the joys and the hardships of all its children, have always been big manifestations of faith and of love.

From here I also want to send my greeting to the children from Cuba that worship the Virgen de la Caridad del Cobre in any part of the world; together with all their siblings that live in this beautiful earth, I put them under her maternal protection, requesting to Her, loving Mother of all, that gather her children by means of the reconciliation and the fraternity.

6. Today, continuing with that glorious tradition of love to the common Mother, before proceeding to her coronation I want to address her and to invoke her together with you all:

Virgen de la Caridad del Cobre,
Patron Saint from Cuba!

God saves you, María, full with grace!
You are the Father's dear Daughter,
Christ's Mother, our God,
The alive Temple of the Holy Spirit.
You take on your behalf, Virgen de la Caridad,
The memory of the God that is Love,
The memory of Jesus' new commandment,
The evocation of the Holy Spirit:
Love spilled in our hearts,
Fire of charity sent in Pentecost on the Church,
Gift of the full freedom of the children of God.
Blessed you among the women
And blessed the fruit of your stomach, Jesus!
You have come to visit our town
And you have wanted to stay with us
As Mother and Mrs. of Cuba,
Along with their pilgrimage
For the roads of the history.
Your name and your image are sculpted
In the mind and in the heart of all the Cubans,
Inside and outside of the Homeland,
As sign of hope and center of fraternal communion.

Sacred María, Mother of God and our Mother!
Pray for us before your Son Jesus Christ,
Intercedes for us with your maternal heart,
Flooded of the charity of the Spirit.
Increase our faith, vivify the hope,
Increase and strengthen in us the love.
Aid our families,
Protect the youths and the children,
Console those that suffer.
Be Mother of the faithful ones and of the shepherds of the Church,
model and star of the new evangelization.

Mother of the reconciliation!
Gathers to your dispersed town for the world.
Make of the Cuban nation a home of siblings and sisters
So that this town opens up wide open
Its mind, its heart and its life to Christ,
Only Savior and Redeemer,
That lives and reigns with the Father and the Holy Spirit,
For the centuries of the centuries.

Amen.