MELBOURNE: 28th August -- The Smiling Cardinal, His Eminence,
Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez stopped by the Australian Salesian Family on his trip
to
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
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,
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
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
