Rodriguez Raps Burke

Honduran Cardinal Andres Rodriguez Maradiaga, the archbishop of Tegucigalapa, was in St. Louis last night to deliver a lecture at Jesuit-run St. Louis University....

As always, he had some interesting things to say.

"Poverty is our big challenge," he said. "That is not taken into consideration by the present administration here. President (George W.) Bush is not concerned about Latin America any more."...

I can hear the screaming begin.

Politicians are a special concern for Rodriguez Maradiaga. "Politics have become an industry in our nation," he said. "People want to become president in order to get rich. We have to recover the dignity of politics, we have to work as Christians to give politicians their ethics back."

But would this once (and future) papabile deny communion to politicians, or anyone else for that matter?

"[P]ersonally, I could never deny Holy Communion to a person. It would be a public scandal. Those who know they shouldn't be accepting the Eucharist have their own consciences. In my capacity as a pastor, I would never decide that for someone else."

Oh, my.

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