In an interview with the Peruvian newspaper La Republica published on Sunday, novelist Mario Vargas Llosa said he hoped Pope Francis would remove two cardinals whose ideas he blasted as antiquated and far removed from what he called the pope’s focus on “social justice”. “I think one has to expect from Pope Francis that these church authorities who represent the caves are removed and replaced with bishops, archbishops who are much more imbued with the mentality of propinquity and social justice which Pope Francis appears to represent,” said the Nobel laureate.
Vargas Llosa referred to his earlier criticisms of the Peruvian cardinal Juan Luis Cipriani, whom he said represented “the most reactionary, intolerant, fanatical Church” in saying he hoped that the Vatican’s changes of priorities would reach his home country of Peru. He also blasted Nicolás de Jesús López, cardinal from the Dominican Republic, for supporting what Vargas Llosa called “racist laws which strip Dominican nationality from nearly 200,000 Dominicans for being sons or descendants of Haitians, something which seems to me totally incompatible with what the Catholic Church should represent”.
Jesús López also made headlines in the United States and the Caribbean this summer when he referred to the newly nominated, openly gay US ambassador to the Dominican Republic, James “Wally” Brewster”, as a “faggot”. “I hope [Brewster] does not arrive in the country,” he said then. “Because I know if he comes he is going to suffer and will have to leave.” On Monday, the Dominican Republican’s ambassador to the Vatican, Víctor Grimaldi, sent a letter to the Pope calling the author’s comments “rude” and expressing continued support for Jesús López.
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