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Pope Leo XIV accepts the resignation of the archbishop of Santiago de Cuba and names his successor
The Vatican on Saturday, November 7 accepted the resignation of Dionisio Guillermo García Ibáñez, 81, and appointed Juan Gabriel Díaz Ruiz, until now bishop of Matanzas, as archbishop of Santiago de Cuba, according to Periódico Cubano and Diario de Cuba.
Pope Leo XIV on Saturday, November 7, 2026 accepted García Ibáñez's resignation as archbishop of Santiago de Cuba and appointed in his place Díaz Ruiz, bishop of Matanzas since 2022. The appointment was announced in an official Vatican bulletin and confirmed by the Cuban Catholic Bishops' Conference.
García Ibáñez, born in Guantánamo in 1945, led the archdiocese from February 2007 and had passed the age of 75 that Canon Law sets for submitting a resignation, although it is for the pope to decide when to accept it. The two sources differ on how long the wait lasted: Diario de Cuba puts it at six years and Periódico Cubano at nearly seven.
The new archbishop is 65 and was born on November 14, 1960 in Céspedes, Camagüey. He began a civil engineering degree, left it to enter the seminary and later earned a licentiate in Sacred Scripture at the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome. He was ordained a priest in 1989, named bishop of Ciego de Ávila in July 2017 by Pope Francis and moved to the diocese of Matanzas in April 2022. He is vice-president of the Cuban Bishops' Conference and chairs a commission on youth ministry and communications.
The archdiocese he takes over is home to the National Shrine of Our Lady of Charity of El Cobre, one of the country's most important religious sites. García Ibáñez chaired the Bishops' Conference between 2009 and 2017, received Pope Francis in September 2015 during his visit to eastern Cuba and in May 2026 warned that Cubans could not remain passive in the face of the country's economic and social decline.
Diario de Cuba framed the change within a Catholic hierarchy "in need of renewal" and had previously questioned the delay in replacing certain bishops, as well as calling for greater independence of the Church from the Cuban government. The Vatican did not attribute the appointment to political circumstances. According to Periódico Cubano, other dioceses face pending vacancies and ageing leaders, and Díaz Ruiz takes office in a setting marked by emigration, economic hardship and political restrictions.
Sources: Periódico Cubano · Diario de Cuba
Data updated: 2026-11-07T16:15:00.000Z