Honduran cardinal says Chavez “thinks he is a god”

San Salvador, El Salvador, Jul 24, 2007 / 08:17 am

The Archbishop of Tegucigalpa, Cardinal Oscar Andres Rodriguez Maradiaga, criticized President Hugo Chavez this week and said the Venezuelan leader “thinks he is a god and has the right to step on everyone else.” He called on Chavez to be more open to dialogue and honest criticism saying, “We all need fraternal correction.”

In an interview with the newspaper “El Diario de Hoy,” Cardinal Maradiaga said, “The leader of Venezuela thinks he is a god and that he has the right to step on everyone else with an arrogance we have already seen in other dictators in history, even in some who actually decreed the death of God and who, after some 20 years, disappeared from the map and are today remembered as tyrants.”

“If you don’t have a friend who can tell you your faults, then pay an enemy to do so,” the cardinal said. “We all need fraternal correction,” he added.

“In my pastoral work,” he continued, “I have a presbyteral council, but I do not elect those who think like me, because then, what’s the purpose of being surrounded by adulators who tell someone what he wants to hear. I should find people who are different than me in order to find the truth.”

Cardinal Maradiaga warned that Venezuela is going to experience “great suffering, because whenever a totalitarian government is erected, the freedom of the people is what is lost.”