Honduran Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez
Maradiaga arrived in Wellington Oct. 9.
But New Zealand Catholic Church
officials were expecting him to arrive the next day, after being given
the wrong information by Vatican authorities.
Cardinal Rodriguez
Maradiaga, who on Oct. 3 finished a meeting with Pope Francis and the
so-called Group of Eight commission of cardinals, endured the not
unusual "bumpy" arrival into Wellington because of high winds, but there
was no one to meet him at Wellington airport.
So the polyglot cardinal
caught a taxi and asked the driver to take him to the Catholic
cathedral.
The taxi driver went to a Baptist church, and Cardinal
Rodriguez Maradiaga had to advise him to use his GPS device to find the
Catholic destination.
When he finally arrived, the cardinal was let
into Viard House near Sacred Heart Cathedral by the parish priest,
Father James Lyons.
Archbishop John Dew was shopping at the supermarket
at the time, and when he returned with his shopping bags, he found one
of the most influential cardinals in the Catholic Church waiting in his
kitchen.
New Zealand church officials checked if the other details of
his visit were correctly supplied by Rome -- and they were, much to
everyone's relief.