Executive Council approves readmission of Cuba

Presiding Bishop Michael Curry embraces Bishop Griselda Delgado del Carpio of Cuba after the formal readmission of her church into The Episcopal Church at the Executive Council meeting in Salt Lake City, Utah, on Feb. 15, 2020. Photo: Egan Millard/Episcopal News Service

Bishop Griselda Delgado del Carpio of Cuba and the Rev. Gilberto Junco Sotolongo of Cuba join in a round of applause after the formal readmission of their church into The Episcopal Church on Feb. 15. Photo: Egan Millard/Episcopal News Service

In his capacity as secretary of General Convention, Barlowe also formally certified that the Episcopal Church of Cuba had met the requirements for readmission to The Episcopal Church as a diocese. At the 2018 General Convention in Austin, Texas, the House of Bishops and House of Deputies voted to readmit Cuba, which the House of Bishops had expelled from the church in 1966.

“Our friends from the Episcopal Church in Cuba have been exemplary,” Barlowe told council, “not only in their extraordinary ministries undertaken in such difficult circumstances over the years, but in all of our conversations over the last five or six years as we’ve moved toward this moment.”

After a unanimous vote of “sí,” it was official: The Episcopal Church of Cuba became the Episcopal Church in Cuba, to a round of joyful applause.

Her voice breaking with emotion, Cuba Bishop Griselda Delgado del Carpio addressed council in Spanish through an interpreter.

“Each one of us has been living [through] a very emotional time in our life in the Diocese of Cuba,” Delgado said, “because the church lived for more than 50 years all by itself.