L’Espresso Renews Accusations Against Cardinal Rodríguez
In December, the Italian magazine accused Rodríguez of receiving yearly 500.000 euros from the Catholic University of Tegucigalpa and of having burned 1,2 million dollars through shady investments in London.
Rodríguez replied that the payments were made not for him personally but for pastoral projects.
But L’Espresso points out that the payments went to Rodríguez’ private account, not to the one of the archdiocese. Rodríguez’ auxiliary bishop Juan José Pineda also received cash.
L’Espresso shows that these huge sums were not included in the balance sheets Rodríguez presented in September 2017 to the Vatican during the Ad-Limina visit. The sheets also show no evidence of over one million euro auxiliary bishop Pineda received from the government.
Another accusation stems from Martha Alegria Reichmann, the widow of Alejandro Valladares, a former Honduras ambassador to the Holy See for 22 years. Rodríguez who was a friend of the family, convinced the couple to invest their savings with the London financier Youssry Henien, the same Henien who made Rodríguez lose 1,2 million euro of his archdiocese. Reichmann realized in February 2015 that the money was gone. Attempts to contact Henien or Rodríguez went unanswered.
So far, Rodríguez defended himself by saying that criticisms against him were attacks against Pope Francis’ “reform”.
Picture: Oscar Rodríguez Maradiaga, © Gabriele Merk, CC BY-SA, #newsGcxvcfmjhm