We Must Make Our Own the Culture of the Good Samaritan: Cardinal Óscar Andrés Rodríguez Maradiaga

The Church ought to proclaim and testify, as a criterion of sociopolitical organization and education, that all men are brothers; and that, if we are brothers, we must fight for establishing relations of equality and to eliminate their greatest obstacles: money and power. We have to establish as a priority that those majorities who suffer poverty and exclusion (the last) will be the first. If Jesus calls the poor ‘blessed’ is because he is assuring them that their situation is going to change, and consequently it is necessary to create a movement that can bring about such a thing, restoring dignity and hope to them.

Making our own the culture of the Good Samaritan before the neighbor in need; feeling as our own the pain of the oppressed, getting close to them, and freeing them. Without this commitment, all religiousness is false. -Cardinal Óscar Andrés Rodríguez Maradiaga SDB, Archbishop of Tegucigalpa

These are excerpts from Cardinal Rodríguez Maradiaga's address at the Dallas Ministry Conference on October 25, 2013   Here is the full text in English