Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez

Pastors are responsible for continually educating the people in the faith, because otherwise they could "lose the vineyard," Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga said during the Oct. 3-6 annual convention of the National Association of Hispanic Priests.

The Sunday Eucharist is "the moment of the intimate dialogue between God and his people, the act of the new covenant sealed with the blood of Christ," said the archbishop of Tegucigalpa, Honduras.

For four centuries, he said, Church leaders took the Bible out of the parishes, fearful that parishioners would misinterpret it. He urged the priests to start bringing the Bible back to the "house of the Lord."

Asserting that the message of many homilies is stagnated at "first Communion level catechism," Rodriguez told the priests gathered in Los Angeles their homilies are "the highest point of the word of God when the priest should become a prophet who takes the place of Jesus Christ."