You might remember Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga of Honduras. Back in 2002, he said that Jews were partly responsible for the bad press the Catholic Church in the US was getting over priests raping children and the media covering it up.

More recently, Edward Pentin of National Catholic Register reported that Maradiaga’s seminary in Honduras was more or less a gay bathhouse, and that the cardinal’s auxiliary was having sex with seminarians. The auxiliary resigned, but the cardinal furiously denied the report — despite a complaint signed by scores of heterosexual seminarians — and compared Pentin to an assassin.

Now comes news that Maradiaga, chosen by Francis to be part of his nine-member inner circle of advisers, is saying that people ought to leave Uncle Ted McCarrick alone. From Lifesite News:

In an interview published on Wednesday evening by Religion Digital, the religious portal of the Spanish-language news site Periodista Digital, Maradiaga once again strongly criticized Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò for having gone public about McCarrick’s sexual predations and the protection the Cardinal received from the highest spheres in the Vatican, especially since Pope Francis was elected to the See of Peter and trusted the American prelate to help him choose new cardinals for the Church in the USA.

Asked to comment about Viganò’s call on the Pope to resign, Maradiaga answered:

It does not seem correct to me to transform something that is of the private order into bombshell headlines exploding all over the world and whose shrapnel is hurting the faith of many. I think this case of an administrative nature should have been made public in accordance with more serene and objective criteria, not with the negative charge of deeply bitter expressions.

Got it? It’s the news reports about McCarrick’s forcing himself on seminarians that are causing people to suffer in their faith, not what McCarrick actually did.

This man is a top adviser to Pope Francis.

So is this one: