UNITED STATES
The Open Tabernacle: Here Comes Everybody
Posted on August 24, 2014 by Betty Clermont
Honduran Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga was named by Pope Francis as head of a group of cardinals to help him govern the Church one month after the former Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio was elected pope. “Vice pope” or the pope’s “right-hand man” is how Rodriguez Maradiaga is usually described in the press.
Australian Cardinal George Pell was appointed by the pope this past February as prefect of the Secretariat of the Economy, giving him control of all Vatican finances and administration including hiring and salaries.
Yet the backgrounds of these now powerful men which demonstrate Pope Francis’ disdain for both the poor and the victims of clerical sex abuse remain unreported by the U.S. media.
Rodriquez Maradiaga actively supported the 2009 coup against the progressive and democratically elected president of Honduras, Manuel Zelaya Rosales. The cardinal was condemned by Latin Americans:
Cardinal Oscar Andres Rodriguez: The path you have chosen to be an accomplice of the military dictatorship is not the way of the Gospel. You cannot be against your people and allow violence and repression in the name of supposed safety and law and the committing of serious human rights violations.
Mr. Oscar Andrés Rodríguez Maradiaga has brought disrespect to his ecclesiastical position by joining the coup and attacking the Honduran people and their democratic institutions, taking sides in a situation so critical for Honduran society….[H]ere he is, heretically offending the faith in the God of Life that he says he proclaims in order to allay himself with the forces of Death. And, there they are, our brothers, killed in cold blood by military assassins legitimated by the word, equally assassin, of Cardinal Rodriguez.
The cardinal appears to have allied himself with the Honduran oligarchy behind the coup….He has adopted a stance that renders him, if not an accomplice of the Honduran coup leaders, then certainly a cardinal who is very useful to their plot….He appears to have chosen what is arguably the most Machiavellian way of trying to stop Zelaya from returning to Honduras.
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