A public viewing was held Friday evening at Our Lady of Charity Church for the late Auxiliary Bishop Agustin Roman.
Roman was a beloved member of South Florida's Cuban exile community, and parishioners have been pouring into the church, also known as La Ermita de la Caridad, to pay their respects.
Priests and bishops from around the world were expected to pay their respects to Roman. Santiago de Cuba Archbishop Dionisio Garcia Ibanez held Mass at the church on Friday.
Roman became the spiritual leader of the exile community after being expelled from Cuba in 1961 and was the first Cuban to be appointed a bishop in the U.S. He served as a mediator during the Mariel boatlift in 1980 and helped to negotiate a peaceful end to the 1987 riots of Cuban detainees in federal prisons in Georgia and Louisiana. He also sought to persuade Cuban-Americans to support asylum for Haitian refugees.
"He always was a man of great courage," Miami Archbishop Thomas Wenski said. "He defended the poor. We know of his work in quelling a riot when some detainees from the Mariel era were unjustly detained by the U.S. government in Atlanta. I went with him during the balsero crisis, and we visited the balseros that were being detained at the naval base in Guantanamo, the only time that he touched Cuban soil since the day that he was expelled by the communist regime."
Roman, 83, went into cardiac arrest at the shrine at La Ermita on Wednesday. He was taken to Mercy Hospital, where he died.
Roman's funeral procession will begin Saturday at noon. His body will be transported from the Shrine of Our Lady of Charity west on South Miami Avenue until Southwest 27th Avenue, then north to Southwest Eighth Street, where it will make a brief stop at the Bay of Pigs Monument at the intersection of Southwest 13th Avenue. The procession will continue east on Southwest Eighth Street to Interstate 95 north, then exit on eastbound Northwest 79th Street to Northwest Second Avenue, where it will end at the Cathedral of St. Mary.
After the Mass, at about 3 p.m., the procession will go north on Northwest Second Avenue to 79th Street, west to southbound I-95 and then to State Road 836 West. The procession will exit on Northwest 107th Avenue, which it will take to Northwest 25th Street to Our Lady of Mercy Cemetery, where Roman will be laid to rest.