You can’t get more arrogant and presumptuous than to compare anyone - even a Pope - to the Lord. Given that this guy is a mouth piece for the Political Pope, this statement is born of the hubris of Francis. Pride cometh before the Fall.
I am Catholic and I do not agree with many things Pope Francis says and I think he is deserving of much of the criticism he receives, however, I don’t think your conclusion is accurate theologically. Christ did clearly state that His followers would be persecuted because of their devotions to His teaching, and that is not the same thing as equating oneself with God.
This is disgusting. BTW, Maradiaga is under investigation for having received huge and unaccounted for payments (the equivalent $35,000 PER MONTH for a no-show job at the university) that he claims to have given to the diocese but which appear nowhere in diocesan or charitable agency accounting; having convinced a wealthy widow to invest all of her funds with a Muslim friend who was a “fund manager” in Europe who was running a Ponzi scheme and disappeared with all her money; for having tastefully overlooked outrageous (and costly) gay activity on the part of an auxiliary bishop who seems to have spent most of his time pressuring seminarians to sleep with him or appearing in their beds at night...and he also wrote the Aparecida document so beloved of Francis, for which the then Cardinal Bergoglio claimed authorship, and which is nothing but stupid ravings about “the poor,” carried over by Bergoglio and Maradiaga - cynically - to this day.
Maradiaga is receiving treatment for prostate cancer - at a hospital in Houston. Early stage prostate cancer isn’t that serious and can be treated anywhere, but speculation is that he wants to be far away from Honduras when some of the legal charges against him hit the fan.