MADRID — Subscribers to Catholic World News online are livid – and at no shortage for condemning words of their own – concerning the behavior of 27-year-old Magdalena Rouco Hernández. While the thought of a woman going topless to protest the Catholic Church’s notoriously non-progressive social agenda would infuriate many of them regardless, the fact that Hernández is the daughter of the ultra conservative head of Spain’s Church only offends and enrages them more.Equally upset by her 72-year-old uncle’s stances on issues including same-sex marriage and divorce, the mother of two decided to make her opinions known within eight pages of Spain’s popular softcore adult interviú magazine.
While she was at it, appearing topless on the May cover of the publication seemed like a good idea, too.
While many accuse her of wanton, slutty, raunchy, pornographic, and generally inappropriate behavior for the photo shoot and interview, Hernández believes that there are more important things to be discussed than simply the exposure of her skin.
In the interviú article, Hernández explains that although her uncle, Cardinal Antonio Maria Rouco Varela, considers himself to be a high profile defender of the “Christian family,” she believes that he is not the “saint” she grew up believing him to be.
“My uncle never tires of repeating that the family is sacred and that you have to respect it. But then he does not respect it and abandons his own,” she insists, explaining that “When my father died, [Rouco] did not come to the funeral, didn’t send flowers or tell my mother of his sorrow. He told us he had a meeting with Pope John Paul II, but it was not true.”
According to Hernández, who attended church daily as a child, the family and decency obsessed Cardinal behaved in exactly the same way when her mother passed away and refused to assist the girl when her husband became unemployed.
Rouco is a close friend of Pope Benedict XVI and was elected president of Spain’s Episcopal Conference this past March. He has repeatedly condemned the socially liberal policies of the country’s Socialist government.
“I wanted to lay bare the hypocrisy of my uncle,” she summed up in the article’s headline.
In order to get that message before the public, Hernández lay bare her own breasts, covering her other delicate bits in red panties, garter belt, and stockings in one photo – and a pink and black corset in another. Two images are viewable online at www.interviu.es.
Unsurprisingly, a representative for the Spanish Episcopal Conference admits that “As you can imagine, we do not want to make any comment.”
