Reprinted from Caribbean Net News
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First woman bishop in Cuba won't copy men

Friday, February 9, 2007

by: Anthony Boadle

HAVANA, Cuba (Reuters): The Rev. Nerva Cot, the first woman bishop named by the Episcopal Church in a developing nation, said she will bring a feminine touch to leadership of her rapidly expanding congregation in Cuba.

The former school teacher was appointed suffragan or auxiliary bishop on Sunday and will be consecrated on June 10 at Havana's Episcopal Cathedral.

"Our mission is not to copy what our brothers have done until now," Cot, 69, said on Wednesday.

Qualities such as tenderness and the ability to listen and mediate will help unite her church like a "real family," she said.

Cot said her appointment was recognition of the role women have played in the church during difficult times when communist Cuba was an officially atheist state.

One of the first three Episcopal women to be ordained priests in Cuba, a traditionally male dominated society, Cot said the Episcopal Church has grown to 10,000 members since Cuba abandoned official atheism and allowed religious worship even for Communist Party members in the early 1990s.

"Since relations between the government and the churches improved, we have seen explosive growth in all the churches, not just ours," she said.

The Episcopal faith was brought to Cuba by American missionaries in the 19th century. Cuba was a diocese of the US church until 1967, when hostility between the Cuban and US government caused a break.

Cot's appointment as one of two new auxiliary bishops in Cuba was announced on Sunday at a ceremony in Cardenas, east of Havana, attended by Canada's Archbishop Andrew Hutchison and US Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, the first woman elected to lead the church in the United States.

Cot's daughter Marianela de la Paz Cot was ordained priest at the same ceremony. Her son is also a priest.

The family became the bastion of Christian faith during decades of atheist government that banned religious education in schools, Cot said.

The churches filled up again during Cuba's severe economic crisis following the collapse of Soviet communism, when Cubans sought spiritual fortitude to cope with hardships, she said.

"Never has the church been so fully attended as now. There is a need to live a spiritual dimension," Cot said.

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