September 14, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) — Cardinal Oscar Andres Rodrigues Maradiaga of Honduras said “no man is born homosexual” during a two-hour discussion with school children last week in Münster, Germany.
In the discussion, the Cardinal brushed over many hot topics raised by students. Yet when asked about the Church’s dealings with people with homosexual tendencies, Cardinal Maradiaga told the children that homosexuality is not a lifelong condition starting from birth. He asserted that “everybody is born a man or a woman, to love the other – that is God’s plan,” the diocesan media website reported. He added that natural sexual orientation is only altered by negative influences in childhood or adolescence such as abuse, neglect, or pornography.
“Sexuality is a gift of God,” Cardinal Maradiaga said. It is “not a hobby, but an expression of love. … Nobody should be the slave of his sexual passions, but should learn how to manage them with responsibility and with self-esteem. … Therefore, we need formation, not just information. … Whoever wants to be father or mother acts according to God’s plan.”
The proposition of ordaining women as priests also came up in the discussion. Maradiaga said: “If God had wanted for it to be possible for women to be priests, then the Mother of God, Mary, the most holy of all women, would have been ordained by Him as the first one.”
The discussion closed a gathering of the German-Honduran Society on the occasion of the opening of an honorary consulate of the Republic of Honduras in Duisburg, Germany. Cardinal Maradiaga is President of Caritas Internationalis and Head of the Pope’s Council of nine Cardinals. The German-Honduran Society invited him to the historic city of Münster for their gathering.
Cardinal Maradiaga’s pronouncements are interesting in the context of statements he made before the synod for the family. During a Q&A after a January 20 talk on “The Meaning of Mercy” at Santa Clara University, he answered a question about homosexuals and the Church by saying: “OK, but that doesn’t mean that we are going to be excluding persons who live their faith [and are homosexual] and would like to be part of the Church. One thing is defining marriage, another thing is pastoral care. This is what I believe will make road in the Synod.” Read the transcript here.
Also, it was recently discovered that leftist billionaire George Soros had hoped to influence Cardinal Maradiaga to help in Soros' campaign to undermine the Church’s public moral voice.
Cardinal Maradiago has endorsed the work of the Soros-supported group PICO, which aims in part to counter the Church's “anti-gay rhetoric.” In 2013, Cardinal Maradiaga promoted PICO's work in a video during a visit from PICO representatives to his diocese. “I want to endorse all the efforts they are doing to promote communities of faith,” he said. “Please, keep helping PICO.”