• Submitted by: manso
• International
• 11 / 07 / 2010

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Fresh from a trip to Cuba and on the heels of a summit of Cuban clergy in Miami, Archbishop Thomas Wenski is raising his profile as a diplomat.

BY JAWEED KALEEM.In Cuba last week for the opening of the island's first seminary since the revolution, Miami Archbishop Thomas Wenski was mingling over wine and cheese with an international group of bishops when he ran into a man in a white guayabera.It was Cuban leader Raúl Castro.

Five months since becoming head of South Florida's archdiocese, Wenski is quickly upping his role as a national Catholic leader. He is often called upon by the influential Washington, D.C.-based U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops to represent them as he did in Cuba -- and as an international diplomat.

Fresh from his three-day trip to the island, where he also toured parishes supported by the U.S. church, Wenski will host a delegation of Cuban clergy, led by Bishop Arturo Gonzalez of Santa Clara and including a dozen other priests and a nun, in a three-day Miami meeting that begins Monday.

It starts with a Mass at the Shrine of Our Lady of Charity in Coconut Grove -- the spiritual heart of the exile community -- and will also include services in Kendall and Hialeah.

``The purpose of these meetings is to build bridges of mutual understanding so the diaspora community can have a greater appreciation of what the present realities in Cuba are and there could be mutual exchange,'' said Wenski, who has been to the island several times.

He has hosted Cuban clergy before in his prior roles as bishop of Orlando and auxiliary bishop of Miami. Now, in an unusual move, the archdiocese is widely advertising the Miami visit and hosting a news conference with the Cuban clergy on Wednesday evening.

NEW DYNAMIC

Wenski's latest efforts regarding Cuba come at a key time for the island's Roman Catholic Church, which has rapidly improved its relations with the Cuban government. That includes the new seminary, the first major religious institution to open on the island since 1959, and also includes the government's release in recent months of dozens of political prisoners after negotiations with Havana Cardinal Jaime Ortega.

HELP FOR HAITI

Fluent in Spanish and Creole, he is also leading a $90 million project by the U.S. church to rebuild parishes and secular life in earthquake-ravaged Haiti and hosted several Haitian and Latin American bishops in Miami in September to hatch plans for those efforts.

``Wenski is not just here by default; he is here with a very specific purpose from the Vatican,'' said Andy Gomez, a senior fellow at the University of Miami Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies. ``The Vatican wants to play a very significant role in building not only in Cuba but throughout Latin America a vibrant, sustainable civil society.''

BY JAWEED KALEEM
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Source: /www.miamiherald.com/2010/11/