Maradiaga says clergy and laity are one

In a powerful address at the University of Dallas on Friday last week, Cardinal Oscar Rodríguez Maradiaga of Tegucigalpa, appointed by Pope Francis to coordinate the Council of Cardinals, prescribed a bold vision of church reform.

“No ministry can be placed above this dignity common to all,” Cardinal Maradiaga said. “Neither are the clergy ‘the men of God’ nor the laity ‘the men of the world’. That is a false dichotomy.” He said the Church must break down the walls between the ordained hierarchy and the laity, with all Catholics becoming “the suffering servant”. “The Church as a society of unequals disappears,” he said.

Cardinal Maradiaga echoed Pope Francis’ concerns about global economic issues. “The effects and consequences of the neoliberal dictatorships that rule democracies are not hard to uncover: they invade us with the industry of entertainment, they make us forget about human rights, they convince us that nothing can be done,” he said. “To change the system, it would be necessary to destroy the power of the new feudal lords. Chimerical? Utopian? The Church decidedly bets on living the globalisation of mercy and solidarity.

“The Church ought to proclaim ... that all men are brothers and [so] we must fight to establish relations of equality and to eliminate their greatest obstacles: money and power,” the cardinal continued. “We must establish as a priority that those majorities who suffer poverty and exclusion (the last) will be first.”

n The former US ambassador to the Holy See, Francis Rooney, told a Washington audience that he thought Pope Francis and his predecessors would be Republicans if they were US citizens. Speaking at a lecture about his new book on US-Vatican relations, Rooney said: “I think because of their true belief in the dignity of humans, and in the inalienable rights of man, and in private property, they would have to be Republicans.”

He cited the Vatican’s commitment to free enterprise, despite Pope Francis’ repeated condemnations of modern capitalism.