Manuel Aurelio Cruz

Styles of Manuel Aurelio Cruz
Reference style	His Excellency The Most Reverend
Spoken style	Your Excellency
Religious style	Bishop

Manuel Aurelio Cruz (born December 2, 1953) is a Cuban American prelate of the Roman Catholic Church who serves as an auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Newark. He was appointed to the position by Pope Benedict XVI on June 9, 2008.

Biography

Manuel Aurelio Cruz was born in Havana, Cuba on December 2, 1953^[1] to Juan and Caridad Cruz. He fled to the United States with his parents in 1966 to escape the revolution, living in Florida before settling in Union City, New Jersey. In his youth, he spent eight years as a member of the emergency room staff at Saint James Hospital in Newark. He attended Seton Hall University, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy and a Master of Arts in Sacred Scripture. He studied for the priesthood at the Immaculate Conception Seminary School of Theology.

Cruz was ordained a priest in the Archdiocese of Newark on May 31, 1980. He was the first Cuban-born priest ordained in the Archdiocese. Following his ordination, Cruz served as parochial vicar at Holy Rosary Parish in Elizabeth, New Jersey. In 1982, he was appointed a parochial vicar at the Cathedral of the Sacred Heart in Newark, New Jersey.^[2] In 1986, he was appointed to the Archdiocesan Vocations Committee by then Archbishop Theodore Edgar McCarrick. He served as Dean of Deanery from 1991 to 1993. In 2000, Pope John Paul II bestowed upon Cruz the honorary title Chaplain of His Holiness, with the title Monsignor.

Since 1995, Cruz has been a faculty member in the Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology at the New Jersey Medical School. In 2005, Archbishop John J. Myers named Cruz vice president for Mission and Ministry for Catholic Health and Human Services. Cruz has served on the Institutional Review Board of various New Jersey hospitals, the ethics committee of Saint Michael's Medical Center, and the New Jersey Catholic Conference's Committee on Ethics.

On June 9, 2008, Cruz was appointed Auxiliary Bishop of Newark and Titular Bishop of Gaguari by Pope Benedict XVI. He received his episcopal consecration on the following September 8 from Archbishop John Myers, with Archbishop Peter Gerety and Bishop David Arias Pérez, OAR, serving as co-consecrators.

Cruz choose a single word for his motto: Caritas. His coat of arms is composed of a shield and a scroll with his motto and external ornamentation. "Caritas," the Latin word for charity, is the mission toward which Cruz has directed his work, especially via his pastoral mission in the healthcare. Cruz’s arms, which occupy the entire shield, are composed of a silver field on which is placed a red Latin cross and is completed by external ornamentation.

Incident

On January 29, 2017 during an afternoon service at the Cathedral Basilica of the Sacred Heart in Newark, New Jersey, one of the churchgoers approached Cruz on the altar and punched him in the face, knocking him on the ground. Police on the scene immediately apprehended the perpetrator. The assailant was identified as Charles Miller, aged 48 and an African-American citizen of Newark. Miller, who had no criminal history prior to the attack, was charged with simple assault by the Essex Sheriff's County. On the other hand, several of Cruz's teeth had reportedly been loosened in the attack, which resulted in 30 stitches on his mouth.

The Mass was intended to be a commemoration for the late MLB player Roberto Clemente.^[3][4]

See also

References

External links

• Archdiocese of Newark

Episcopal succession