First Russian Orthodox Church in the Caribbean

H/T: Memoirs of the Neophyte

Orthodox Church opens in Havana, Cuba.

(POI) Kirill, metropolitan bishop of Smolensk and Kaliningrad, president of the Department for ecclesiastic foreign relations of the Patriarchate of Moscow, went to Cuba to unveil an Orthodox Cathedral in Havana on October 19th. The day after, October 20th, he met card. Jaime Luis Ortega y Alamino, archbishop of Havana and, according to the local agencies, he was also received by the former president Fidel Castro, despite his bad health. To Kirill and the Russian Orthodox Church, yesterday Fidel Castro devoted one of his reflections on the official newspaper "Granma", in which he claims that Kirill "thinks the Catholic Church might solve its problems with such countries as China or Vietnam". The metropolitan bishop Kirill, as reported by the online magazine "New Word" of the archdiocese of Havana, sent to cardinal Ortega "a special greeting from the Patriarch Alexius II, giving him a diptych with the images of Christ and the Virgin, a gift from the highest Russian Orthodox authority". Card. Ortega attended the unveiling of the Orthodox Cathedral along with mgr. Luigi Bonazzi, apostolic nuncio to Cuba, and the President of the State Council Raúl Castro.