This bishop was elevated from priesthood while Wood was governor and because of his affection and respect for the American officer he asked him to walk with him daring the ceremonious procession from the priest's little parish church, where he had served, to the old cathedral where he was to officiate thereafter. It was a solemn religious function and has been described, because of the terrific surroundings of the hour, as not unlike the ceremony which took place in Milan after the Great Plague.
The entire population of the city with some forty or fifty thousand from the surrounding hills packed the streets along the route of the procession. None of them had had a blessing from his own Cuban clergy in many years. It was like a mediaeval scene. The old bishop bowed by years, weakened by his recent grief at the suffering of his people and by the excitement of the moment, and General Wood, the American Protestant, walked together under the bishop's canopy. The people in the streets, seeing this, cried: "Thank God, the General is a Catholic! We didn't know it!"
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From time to time the old bishop, tired with the exertion of swinging the censer with the holy water, would hand it to Wood and ask him to continue the function by his side until he could secure a slight respite. Occasionally as he leaned forward to bless the thousands who lined the way and who had come to feel his touch and kiss his hand his miter would slip to one side on his head and the unperturbed American general would lean forward and straighten it for him. Each time the old bishop turned to him and murmured, "Thank God, you are here! I am so old that I could not have made this journey, if you had not been here to help me."
Wood told him that he was not a Catholic, that indeed from Bishop Bernaba's point of view he was a heretic and bound for Hell.
"No," said the bishop, with a smile, "you are a good Catholic; only you do not know it."
Small wonder that when he left Santiago in the spring of 1899 to visit the United States Wood was presented by the people of the city with a magnificent hand-work scroll which said in Spanish:
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"The people of the City of Santiago de Cuba to General Leonard Wood ... the greatest of all your successes is to have won the confidence and esteem of a people in trouble."
Small wonder that in December, 1899, less than a year after the United States took over the island, he was appointed by President McKinley Governor General of Cuba and made a Major General of United States Volunteers!