So goes the Honduran press

Yesterday in a report in El Tiempo on line which seems to comes from AFP, presumably its Tegucigalpa correspondent, I am identified as a priest - which I am not and have never claimed to be. I am identified as a Jesuit, which I never claimed to be (though I have been trained by the Jesuits in college and in grad school and deeply respect them). It makes it appear that I am speaking about the Honduran bishops conference.

I at first wondered where the quote came from. Then I realized that it was a mistranslation of a remark I had made in a recent blog about an upcoming meeting of the directors of Caritas in Honduras: "I presume there will be a lot of discussion and debate, especially in light of the differences between the message of the Santa Rosa Diocesan Pastoral Council released by our bishop, Monseñor Santos, last Thursday in the cathedral, and the message of the Bishops Conference released on national tv and radio by Cardinal Oscar Rodríguez last Saturday."

The article has appeared in several other publications worldwide.

There are other errors, including the claim that the Santa Rosa de Copán statement was made hours before the Cardinal's statement. The statement was released on Thursday here in Ocotopeque, two days before the cardinal read the conference's statement on national television and radio. It was not sent out until Friday due to the difficulty of getting digital copies of a statement that had been finished on Thursday morning before it was read by the bishop in San Marcos Ocotopeque.

Revised to correct the site of the release of the message, July 9, 2009