The Episcopal Church of Cuba traces its formal origins to 1901, when the House of Bishops of the Episcopal Church established the Missionary District of Cuba under the jurisdiction of the Presiding Bishop. The 1959 Cuban Revolution made communication and travel between the churches difficult, and in 1966 the Episcopal Church of Cuba was made an autonomous Diocese within the Anglican Communion, under the oversight of a Metropolitan Council comprising the Primates of the Anglican Church of Canada, the Church in the Province of the West Indies, and the Episcopal Church based in the U.S. The Episcopal Church voted at its 2018 General Convention to readmit the diocese.
Bishops of Cuba
Recent history and future structure
Internal divisions over a range of issues including the possibility of rejoining the Episcopal Church and the election of a successor to Bishop Perera, led to a long period of instability within the Iglesia Episcopal de Cuba, which found itself unable to elect a bishop for many years. Bishop Miguel Tamayo Zaldívar, a native Cuban who moved to Uruguay to serve as a missionary and subsequently became Bishop of Uruguay in the Iglesia Anglicana de Sudamérica, was appointed Interim Bishop in 2005. Following a number of attempts at resolution of the problem, the Metropolitan Council, in February 2007, appointed CanonNerva Cot Aguilera and Ulises Mario Aguero Prendes as suffragan bishops of the Iglesia Episcopal de Cuba to carry out pastoral oversight under the direction of Bishop Tamayo. They were consecrated on June 10, 2007. Cot Aguilera was the first woman to be appointed an Anglican bishop in Latin America. After a short retirement, Cot Aguilera died suddenly on July 10, 2010 after a brief battle with severe anemia. She was 71. Bishop Tamayo worked industriously to heal divisions within the diocese, but repeated attempts to elect his successor ultimately failed. Following Bishop Tamayo's announcement in 2009 of his wish to resign. She was ordained to the episcopate on February 7, 2010 and following Bishop Tamayo's resignation was installed as diocesan on November 28, 2010. At least one bishop, Bishop Nerva Cot, has expressed openness to ordaining openly gay and lesbian clergy. At a meeting of the Diocesan Synod in March 2015, following the decision by the USA and Cuba to re-establish diplomatic relations, it was resolved to take steps to return formally to the Episcopal Church. A commission formed to study the resolution is expected to consider the request at the General Convention in 2018. In July, 2018, at the 79th Episcopal General Convention, both the House of Bishops and the House of Deputies voted unanimously to re-admit the Episcopal Church of Cuba as a diocese of the Episcopal Church in province II, which includes dioceses from New York and New Jersey in the United States, Haiti and the Virgin Islands.
