A Visit to the Family…

Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez SDB

 

MELBOURNE: 28th August -- The Smiling Cardinal, His Eminence, Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez stopped by the Australian Salesian Family on his trip to Australia to deliver the Caritas-Australia sponsored Helder Camara Lecture on Tuesday 27 August.

A prominent Salesian, Cardinal Rodriguez had been invited to this country to speak on “Signs of Hope” – a look at where the Spirit is working in our church today and in our culture.

And yet, on the day before this important engagement, he took the time out to meet his own Salesian Family at a dinner hosted by Salesian College, Chadstone (Victoria).

They had gathered in their numbers - over 200 of them - on a busy Monday: Salesians, Salesians Sisters, parish personnel, Salesian Cooperators, past pupils, friends and teachers, and most importantly, young people. There were student representatives from Salesian College Chadstone, Salesian College Sunbury, St Joseph’s Ferntree Gully and St Margaret’s MaryPrimary School, North Brunswick, all eager to meet and listen to this 59 year old Cardinal of the church, whom they soon recognised as one of their own.

Cardinal Rodriguez will be one of the electors of the successor to Pope John Paul II. He was only nominated a Cardinal himself in 2001. He is the Archbishop of Tegucigalpa, the capital of the small Central American nation of Honduras. Until 1999, he was President of CELAM, the Latin American Bishop’s Conference. He has degrees in philosophy, theology, clinical psychology and psychotherapy, speaks six languages, is trained as a pilot and plays the piano.

In his own country, Cardinal Rodriguez’s campaigning for human rights has won widespread acknowledgment. He is admired as a dynamic pastor who negotiated peace deals with the rebels and who led rebuilding efforts after a disastrous earthquake.

Cardinal Rodriguez has great concerns for issues of social justice and was one of the small group which met with and handed over the Jubilee 2000 petitions for debt relief to the German Chancellor, Gerhard Schroeder, in Cologne. He has repeatedly spoken out against abortion and the destruction of embryos in scientific work.