So, What About Maradiaga? -- The Answers Can Be Found in the Events of 2012 and 2013

Latin America has a recurring corruption problem, which has most recently reached vast proportions. Just this past couple of weeks, a vice-president was sentenced to a 6-year jail sentence (in Ecuador), a former president had an arrest warrant standing against her (in Argentina), and a standing president barely escaped an impeachment procedure (in Peru) -- all cases linked to endemic corrupt practices.

So naturally it is no surprise that local Cardinal Oscar Rodríguez Maradiaga, the most powerful Cardinal in the Francis entourage, who had been known to -- shall we use a safe word? -- "facilitate" the election of Cardinal Bergoglio to the papacy in 2013, and who led the world federation of Catholic charities (Caritas Internationalis), and who was also chancellor of the local Catholic university with lots of access to lots of funding would find himself entangled with explosive accusations of financial malfeasance. It's how things work for many in power in the region.

Unfortunately, we cannot say anything else here. The pieces of the puzzle are all in the open, and all elements that need to be investigated by a serious journalist are mentioned in the previous paragraph. Who will find out what happened in 2012 and 2013?

Breaking News; Kasper, Danneels, Schonborn, Cupich, Wuerl and Maradiaga appointed by Pope Francis to 2015 Synod

The finalized, complete list of participants in the Synod of Bishops in 2015 was published in today's Vatican Bollettino: XIV General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops (October 4 to 25 2015) - List of Participants, 15/09/2015.

In addition to the Synod officers (who are all hold-overs from last year's "Extraordinary Synod"), delegates elected by the Bishops' Conferences and the Union of Superior Generals and confirmed by the Pope as Synod members months ago, and ex officio participants (the heads of the Eastern Catholic Churches and the Prefects or Presidents of Curial dicasteries), the final list contains the names of prelates appointed by the Pope (as is his prerogative) as members of the Synod. This is the first time that the list of direct papal appointees to the Synod of 2015 has been officially published, although rumors have been circulating for weeks about the impending appointment of Archbishop Cupich.

(Members of the "Council of Cardinals" are not ex officio members of the Synod, and of its nine members two have not been made members of the Synod either by election or papal appointment - Cardinal O'Malley of Boston, USA and Cardinal Errazuriz Ossa of Chile.)

Among those attending the Synod due solely to papal appointment are the following liberals or "moderates": Cardinals Godfried Danneels, Walter Kasper, Christoph Schonborn OP, Oscar Rodríguez Maradiaga SDB, John Dew (a vocal supporter of communion for the "divorced and remarried" long before the current Pontificate), Donald Wuerl, Dionigi Tettamanzi (former Archbishop of Milan who last year emerged as a supporter of Kasper's proposal) and Daniel Sturla SDB (more about him here); Archbishop Victor Manuel Fernández, Rector of the Pontifical Catholic University of Argentina and one of the Pope's closest advisers and ghostwriters; Archbishop Blase Cupich of Chicago (USA), and Msgr. Pio Vito Pinto (Dean of the Roman Rota and head of the Pope's commission for annulment reform).

They add to the liberal-leaning representatives elected by their respective bishops' conferences to be Synod members and already confirmed by Pope Francis (as we reported in June): Bishop Johan Bonny of Antwerp (Belgium), Bishop Jean-Paul Vesco OP of Oran (Algeria), "Shadow Synod" participants Bishop Jean-Marie Lovey of Sion (Switzerland), Archbishop Georges Pontier and Bishop Jean-Luc Brunin of France; the three German delegates and "Shadow Synod" participants Cardinal Marx, Archbishop Koch and Bishop Bode; Cardinal Mario Poli of Buenos Aires (Argentina), Archbishop Diarmuid Martin of Dublin (Ireland), and Cardinal Vincent Nichols of Westminster (England & Wales). 

Notable as well among the attendees are Rev. Fr. François-Xavier Dumortier SJ (Rector of the Pontifical Gregorian University, which played host to the "Shadow Synods" of May and September) and Rev. Fr. Antonio Spadaro SJ, Director of the La Civilta Cattolica and a leading proponent of the new pastoral direction of the current Pontificate. Fr. Dumortier is the only Rector of a Pontifical University among the delegates. 

Among the more conservative-leaning papal appointees (at least when it comes to the Kasper proposal) are Cardinals Carlo Caffarra of Bologna, Timothy Dolan of New York, Gualtiero Bassetti (Archbishop of Perugia-Città della Pieve), and Elio Sgreccia, president emeritus of the Pontifical Academy for Life and one of the most prominent members of the Wojtylian old guard in the fight against the "culture of death". Cardinals Philippe Ouédraogo (Archbishop of Ouagadougou in Burkina Faso) and Alberto Suárez Inda (Archbishop of Morelia, Mexico) are also reckoned among the conservatives.

As expected, Cardinal Burke is not a Synod Father this time around. 

Cardinal Rodriguez Maradiaga: Pope wants to take "Church renovation" to "irreversible" point: Previous reforms were "insufficient, superficial", Church reform to be "deep and total".

On January 20, 2015, Cardinal Oscar Andres Maradiaga Rodriguez, the Coordinator of Pope Francis' Council of Cardinal Advisors gave a talk at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics of the Santa Clara University in Silicon Valley. His remarks were drawn from an essay he had written, The Church of Mercy with Pope Francis. The following passage from this essay reveal just how far-reaching the "Franciscan reform" is intended to be. (His talk, as delivered, can be found here: The Meaning of Mercy - Reflections by Cardinal Oscar Andres Maradiaga Rodriguez on a Central Theme of Pope Francis.)

We walk as Church towards a deep and global renovation. For this renovation to be sincerely Catholic, it must encompass all of the historical dimensions of the Church.

Specifically, there is no true ecclesial renovation without a transformation of the institutions; of the quality and focus of the activities; of the mystic and the spiritual. Usually, renovation begins with pastoral activities. For it is there where the inconsistencies of a certain “model” of the Church and reality are primarily experienced. The missionaries, the evangelists on the “margins” of the Church, are the first ones to notice the insufficiency of the “traditional” ways of action; the pastoral criticism begins with the experience of the mission in the “peripheries.” Changes and adjustments begin there.