Picture of cardinals standing together

Why Is Rodriguez Maradiaga Still a Cardinal? The Face of Vatican Corruption

Fatima Perspectives #1219

To the surprise of absolutely no one who has paid any attention to Church affairs over the past 50 years, Cardinal Theodore McCarrick has finally been exposed to the general public as the homosexual predator he always was. The Diocese of Metuchen, where McCarrick was the bishop from 1982 to 1986, had in vain offered the ludicrous defense that there were only “three allegations of sexual misconduct with adults decades ago; two of these allegations resulted in settlements.” The evidence mounts that McCarrick was a serial sexual abuser of young seminarians and priests in formation who were barely legal adults.

Now suspended from the exercise of his “ministry” by order of the Vatican Secretary of State, on the order in turn of Pope Francis — fifty years too late — McCarrick was nonetheless, as Ross Douthat notes, “active in the politicking” for the election of Jorge Bergoglio as Pope. Too old to participate in the conclave he helped engineer, after the election McCarrick was rewarded by being allowed to serve as “an eminence grise, whose lobbying helped elevate several of the new pope’s choices for high office in the American church — including the new cardinal archbishop of Newark, Joseph Tobin, and the head of the Vatican dicastery for family life, Kevin Farrell, both of whom considered McCarrick a mentor.” Having been “mentored” by McCarrick, both Tobin and Farrell are, accordingly, enablers of the abominable corruption of “gay Church,” a major element of the worst crisis in faith and discipline the Church has ever seen.

But that same abominable corruption, the sure sign of a divine chastisement to come, extends as well into the Vatican apparatus. Consider the prelate depicted above, Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga of Tegucigalpa, who is no less than “a key confidante of Pope Francis who is coordinator of the ‘C9’ group of cardinals advising him on reforming Church governance and the Roman Curia.” It was Rodriguez Maradiaga who doggedly defended the ecclesiastical criminal Jose Juan Pineda Fasquelle of Tegucigalpa, Auxiliary Bishop of that diocese, who as Edward Pentin reports for the National Catholic Register, “has been accused of engaging in homosexual interactions with Tegucigulpa seminarians.”   Pineda has since resigned.

Worse, as Pentin further reports, “nearly 50 seminarians in Honduras have protested against what they say is a widespread and entrenched pattern of homosexual practice in Tegucigalpa’s major seminary. In a letter written to the seminary’s formators that was subsequently circulated in June to the country’s Catholic bishops, the seminarians asserted ‘irrefutable evidence’ exists that a homosexual network pervades the institution and is being protected by its rector.”

These allegations, Pentin observes, “have particular resonance in the United States because they echo some key aspects of the current scandal in the Church in the United States, surrounding alleged sexual abuse by Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, the archbishop emeritus of Washington.”

And what was Rodriquez Maradiaga’s reaction to the seminarians’ letter?  As Pentin recounts: “The Honduran seminarians’ letter reportedly was not met with praise for having come forward in June; Cardinal Maradiaga instead accused them of being ‘gossipers’ who wish to portray their fellow seminarians in a bad light, according to sources in Honduras.”

The Honduran seminarians have come forward in part because a “seminarian from the Honduran Diocese of Santa Rosa de Copán tried but failed to take his own life in April, after he had discovered his male lover in the seminary was in another relationship.”  The Register has obtained a copy of the suicide note, along with “graphic photographic evidence of homosexual pornography, exchanged on WhatsApp between seminarians who did not sign the letter, as well as other obscene messages. The exchanges have been verified as authentic by computer specialists at the Catholic University of Honduras who searched computer memory and handed the exchanges to the country’s bishops.”

This past June, during a meeting of the Honduran bishops at which the letter was discussed, none other than Rodriguez Maradiaga, the Pope’s right hand man, teamed up with Bishop Angel Garachana Pérez of San Pedro Sula, the president of the bishops’ conference of Honduras, and “immediately started attacking the letter’s authors.” And now, says Pentin, “[a] source close to the discussions told the Register it is likely no immediate action will be taken to respond to the alleged problems within the seminary.  The Register contacted the offices of Cardinal Maradiaga, the Honduran bishops’ conference and each of the country’s individual bishops, requesting further comment about the matter. None of the bishops had replied to the Register’s queries at the time this article was published.”

Meanwhile, “Cardinal Maradiaga had not responded to questions submitted by the Register regarding the allegations of widespread homosexual misconduct at the Tegucigalpa archdiocesan seminary by the time this article was published. But an informed source said he views them as inventions. ‘He looks out for the guilty but doesn’t realize that over half the seminarians are homosexuals,’ the source said, adding that some formators recently refused to participate in priestly ordinations because of the candidates’ alleged homosexuality. ‘The cardinal ordained them himself’, the source said.”

And yet Rodriguez Maradiaga’s mandatory resignation at age 75 has not been accepted by Francis, even though he is, as Pentin notes, under pressure to explain what he knew and when he knew it concerning Pineda’s “sexual misconduct with seminarians and lavish spending on his lovers that was so obvious to Honduras’ poverty-wracked faithful…”

Pope Francis has spent the past five years publicly denouncing orthodox Catholics as hypocrites, presuming to issue blanket judgments on the subjective dispositions of the outwardly observant. Here is one of the innumerable examples of this endless ecclesiastical demagoguery:

“There are those who say, ‘I am very Catholic, I always go to Mass, I belong to this association and that one; but my life is not Christian, I don’t pay my workers a just wage, I exploit people, I am dirty in my business, I launder money’.

“There are many Catholics who are like this and they cause scandal. How many times have we all heard people say ‘if that person is a Catholic, it is better to be an atheist’.”

Perhaps Francis should begin leveling that accusation against the very people who surround him or who enjoy his favor and protection, and then act accordingly.  He could begin with Rodriquez Maradiaga, removing him from office, and then move on to the likes of Cardinal Farrell, the roommate of Cardinal McCarrick, who heaped praise on the sexual predator, designed his own episcopal coat-of-arms “to honor Theodore Cardinal McCarrick, Archbishop emeritus of Washington,” and yet, incredibly enough, has been made by Francis both a Cardinal and the Prefect of “the laity and family dicastery to lead the upcoming Synod on Young People.”

And perhaps Francis should consider why, under these circumstances, his accusation might be perceived by some as distinctly applicable to the accuser.

 

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