00:01And Cubans remember the two visits that Father Robert Francis Prevost, now Pope Leo XIV, made to the island.
00:09He visited Cuba as prior to the Order of St. Augustine in 2011.
00:14Monsignor Emilio Aranguren, Bishop of Holguin, and other people who knew him, he was their testimony.
00:19Jordanes Rodriguez has the story.
00:21Two decades unite Fray Robert Francis Prevost, then Prior General of the Augustinian Order, with Monsignor Emilio Aranguren, Bishop of Holguin.
00:33According to him, during a visit to Rome in 2005, he met today's Pope Leo XIV.
00:39From there came the relationship of friendship, and I told him the need I had for priests in the diocese, and I told him how good it was that the Augustinians could come to the diocese.
00:55And truly the new Pope as a person is a very simple person, very natural.
00:58Father Robert Francis Prevost, now Pope Leo XIV, visited the island on two occasions.
01:10He made two trips in April 2008 and February 2011 to Havana, Las Tunas and Holguin, among other provinces in eastern Cuba.
01:22When I saw him come out onto the balcony I was surprised, I bowed my head and prayed for him.
01:28Last year in Puerto Rico, at a meeting of the Latin American Bishops' Council, they exchanged views again, recalls Fr. Emilio.
01:42And there again we had the opportunity to greet each other and talk, and last year the bishops of the country and myself
01:48went to Rome for an established visit, and we already visited him in the dicastery and talked about Cuba.
01:58In the city of Porto Padre, right in the province of Las Tunas, they remember him with great affection.
02:09The order of the Augustinians knows about the hospitality of these people.
02:13I am a humble, simple person, just like the Pope, but it gave me a great feeling to know that today the Pope spent a night under the roof of my house sharing with me.
02:25A very wonderful and beautiful thing because God puts things in their place.
02:36Before going to sleep I asked him if he wanted to have coffee, and he told me a little bit.
02:40And then on the two balances in the front, we talked for a while about the church, and when I had been baptized.
02:52Certainly for me it was a very nice experience, because when you realize and hear the name of the Pope,
03:06and you hear the name and surname of the Cardinal and you realize it is the person you met at a certain moment of your life is very exciting after the order of St.
03:14St. Agustin was for about 16 years in our parish in the diocese of Holguin.
03:23I think that for the universal church, the fact that the Pope continues to have that Latin American imprint is a blessing.
03:34Especially His Holiness Leo XIV, who I really believe has been and is the ideal man that we believe by faith that the Holy Spirit has given us in this stage that is beginning now.
03:49Well, last night I sent him a message, and first I said Holy Father and then I said Dear Brother.
03:59I sent him a text thanking him for the yes that he had given to the Lord, the yes that he had given to the church,
04:09and that this would provide the possibility for him to come again to a reality that he already knows.
04:14This is the affection that these Cubans profess for the missionary who one day walked the streets of Puerto Pedro and others in the east of the island.
04:29Camarógrafo Eide La Pera de Jordanis, RodrÃguez Laurencio, Telesur, Holguin, Cuba.
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