BY ELAINE DE VALLE

  Auxiliary Bishop Agustín Román, the beloved spiritual leader of Cuban exiles, was recovering at Mercy Hospital Monday after suffering a heart attack over the weekend.

  Román, 74, woke up Saturday morning with a pain in his chest, he said from his bed at the hospital, which is next to La Ermita de la Caridad -- Our Lady of Charity -- a
  bayside shrine to Cuba's patron saint that he helped build in the 1960s.

  ''It was a heart attack,'' he said, adding that doctors and hospital staff were running a series of tests on his cardiac functions.

  ''The doctor told me not to even think about when I could leave, that it's up to my heart to decide,'' the priest said.

  The Rev. Francisco Santana, who lives with Román in the tiny chamber next to La Ermita, drove him to the hospital after the bishop woke him by knocking on the wall
  separating their rooms at about 5 a.m.

  Santana said doctors tried to perform a catheterization Sunday but were unsuccessful. Because Román was recovering from a bad cold, Santana said, he could not have surgery. Yet.

  ``We are waiting for him to get better to have open-heart surgery.''

  It won't be his first. In 1992, Román underwent quadruple-bypass surgery and has a pacemaker, according to archdiocese spokeswoman Mary Ross Agosta.

  He has gone back to the hospital several times since, including once in 1999 and again earlier this year.

  ''I've had so many heart attacks, I don't know which ones are small ones and which ones are big ones,'' Román said from his hospital bed Monday.

  Although he was in stable condition, Román said doctors have ordered complete rest and no visitors. The Sisters of Charity at his church have brought him notes left by parishioners and phone messages from well-wishers.

  A popular priest who was expelled from Cuba in 1961 by Fidel Castro's government, Román has become the grandfatherly dean of Cuban Catholics in South Florida.

  In 1967, he led the campaign to build La Ermita, where he lives and still says Mass.

  Twenty years later, he became a national hero when he persuaded rioting Cuban detainees at prisons in Oakdale, La., and Atlanta to lay down their weapons and
  release hostages in exchange for his help in fighting the deportation of Mariel boatlift felons.

  Ross Agosta said worried worshipers could send get-well cards to the shrine.

  But no flowers, please, Román said.

  ''Let people give to the poor any expense they would make on me,'' he said. ``All I ask is for their prayers.''

  Santana said the church on South Miami Avenue will be open from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. for believers who want to pray for their beloved bishop.

  Prayers for him also will be said during the noon and 8 p.m. Masses, Santana said.

  ''He would like, before he dies, to go to a free Cuba. That is his passion,'' Santana said.

  'But like he says, `If I don't see it from the ground floor, I'll see it from the second floor.' ''