Episcopal Church of Cuba

Episcopal Church of Cuba
The arms of the Iglesia Episcopal de Cuba
Founded	1901
Polity	Episcopal
Headquarters	Havana, Cuba
Territory	Concurrent with the Island of Cuba
Members	10,000 in 46 congregations (2016)
Website	http://www.cuba.anglican.org/

The Episcopal Church of Cuba (Spanish: Iglesia Episcopal de Cuba) is an extra-provincial diocese within the Anglican Communion. As it is not part of a larger province it has no primate.

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.

As of 2016, the Church consists of forty-six parishes, and about 10,000 members.

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 (formerly the Iglesia Anglicana del Cono Sur de las Americas), was appointed Interim Bishop in 2005.

Following a number of attempts at resolution of the problem, the Metropolitan Council, in February 2007, appointed Canon Nerva 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.