Bishop of Holguín
Emilio Aranguren Echeverría is Bishop of Holguín, Cuba. Bishop Emilio Aranguren Echeverría was born on 2 September 1950 in Santa Clara, Cuba, and has dedicated his life to pastoral work since his priestly ordination on 1 February 1976. The son of Basque immigrants, he began his academic formation at the school of the Marist Brothers and, after the revolution, continued in the state school. His vocation led him to enter San Carlos and San Ambrosio Seminary in Havana, where he completed the stages of Philosophy and Theology. From his first years as a parish priest, he served in several urban and rural parishes: Cruces in Cienfuegos; La Pastora and the then Co-Cathedral in Santa Clara; and, from there, Santo Domingo and Manacas, always committed to the spiritual growth of his communities. He took part in an ITEPAL (CELAM) course on Participatory Planning, which favored his contribution to the preparation and celebration of the Cuban National Ecclesial Meeting (ENEC) in February 1986. In 1991, Pope John Paul II appointed him auxiliary bishop of Cienfuegos-Santa Clara. He was consecrated a bishop on 23 June 1991 in Santa Clara. In 1995, when the new Diocese of Santa Clara was created, he was appointed bishop of Cienfuegos, an office he held for 10 years. In November 2005, Pope Benedict XVI appointed Bishop Aranguren as Bishop of Holguín, where he has continued his pastoral service. As secretary general of the COCC from 1991 to 2005, he participated in important meetings of the Latin American Church, such as the Fifth General Conference of the Latin American and Caribbean Episcopate held in Aparecida, Brazil, in 2007. He had the responsibility of presiding over the representation of the Catholic Church on the Joint Commission that prepared the visit of Pope Saint John Paul II to Cuba in 1998, and he received Pope Francis in Holguín in 2015. Bishop Aranguren was part of the drafting team for the Final Document of the Cuban National Ecclesial Meeting (ENEC), a milestone in Cuban ecclesial reflection. He has been a member of the CELAM presidency, leading the Economic Committee between 2007 and 2011. Under his impetus, as president of the National Commission for the Laity, the Conference of Catholic Bishops of Cuba (COCC) carried out studies on small communities on the island, producing the pastoral document "The Parish: Community of Communities" and, also as a fruit of the National Meeting of the Laity in 2017, the booklets "The Decalogue of the Catholic Layperson" and "The ABC of the Catholic Layperson Today in Cuba". From 2018, Bishop Aranguren was president of the Conference of Catholic Bishops of Cuba. At the conclusion of his service in 2025, he was elected president of the National Commission for Catechesis and Christian Initiation.