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Is Pope Francis Secretly Sneaking Out Of The Vatican At Night To Give Money To The Poor?
He has personally sent money to old women struggling on a pension and to immigrants. He has personally called people who have written him letters. Is Pope Francis now secretly sneaking out of the Vatican at night to give money to the poor?
The speculation that he may be doing so arises from an interview with Archbishop Konrad Krajewski, “Almoner of His Holiness” – a little-known post that dates back to the 13th century that involves distributing money from the Holy See to the poor and marginalized.
“When I say to him ‘I’m going out into the city this evening’, there’s the constant risk that he will come with me,” said the Polish prelate.
When asked directly if Pope Francis ever joined him on these evening trips into the city, Archbishop Krajewski only smiled and said “Next question, please.” Some take that as an implicit suggestion that the Holy Father indeed is going incognito into the streets to give alms as he did while Buenos Aires.
more
http://www.ucatholic.com/news/is-pope-francis-secretly-sneaking-out-of-the-vatican-at-night-to-give-money-to-the-poor/
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hrmjustin
(71,265 posts)Other popes have done the same as well. I hope they have good security around him.
TreasonousBastard
(43,049 posts)I think he's giving them porn.
No Vested Interest
(5,167 posts)
muriel_volestrangler
(101,320 posts)The 2 host DU topics right now, though not in the same thread - yet.
cleanhippie
(19,705 posts)DUzy for sure!
skepticscott
(13,029 posts)to let that rumor spread, assuming they didn't start it. It fits in perfectly with their massive PR campaign for him.
rug
(82,333 posts)I can only imagine the gyrations you would have to go through if this is not a "massive PR campaign for him".
But you may be right. The RCC has shown in expertise in PR in recent years.
hrmjustin
(71,265 posts)skepticscott
(13,029 posts)but it would mean a lot more if he was sneaking out to perform same-sex marriages, wouldn't you say?
hrmjustin
(71,265 posts)skepticscott
(13,029 posts)that the Vatican won't be starting THAT rumor.
hrmjustin
(71,265 posts)
MADem
(135,425 posts)Not next week, but as soon as old Frank purges the place of the Old Guard Haters.
I get a sense he's undergoing a transformation of thought now that he's the guy in charge, telling people what to think, and not being a good little cardinal and thinking as he had been told.
Then again, maybe I'm too much of an optimist. Time will tell!
hrmjustin
(71,265 posts)MADem
(135,425 posts)If he can encourage "the faithful"--particularly those in USA--to be a little less "meanspirited" and "shitty" and "wingnut political," I'd say he's well on his way.
I wish these so-called followers of Jesus would ACT a bit more like the guy! I don't remember Jesus saying a thing about how the poor don't need to be fed (food stamps) or housed, or their health needs ignored (ACA), and I don't remember him saying a word about a woman's right to choose, or equality, either! Yet, to hear these wingnuts go to town, you'd swear that "Republican Jesus" was The One and those issues were tops on his agenda!!!
hrmjustin
(71,265 posts)Lord knows they deserve it.
MADem
(135,425 posts)Maybe promote Conan O'Brien's old Harvard room mate (also named O'Brien) who does amazing work in the poverty-stricken city of Lawrence.
http://harvardmagazine.com/2012/01/the-father-father
....In 11 years, O’Brien’s unequivocal, evangelical mission has helped unify and expand a trilingual congregation in a community rife with entrenched socioeconomic problems. In that same time, the number of operating Catholic churches in Lawrence has fallen by two-thirds, to three, yet St. Patrick’s programs are full and it consistently operates in the black with an annual budget of $1 million, primarily raised through congregant donations. O’Brien’s success depends on his personality—a blunt, respectful honesty peppered with sardonic humor—and a rewarding mix of services.
He led the effort to build a new, beautifully designed $2-million “food shelter,” Cor Unum (“one heart”), that opened in 2006. It combats the reality of urban hunger by serving breakfast and dinner 365 days a year, thanks to hundreds of volunteers. Many children rely on it for their daily meals.
He also consolidated and reorganized two parochial schools to create the Lawrence Catholic Academy (grades K-8), now filled to capacity with 510 students and run by both secular and religious leaders. “If we can get kids as young as possible and give them an all-embracing education, we can get them into the very best schools around here for whatever gifts they have—academic, technical, vocational skills,” he says. “What makes Catholic-school education so powerful is the God part. The best public-school teachers can tell kids to do their math, read, and not to join a gang. But in the Catholic schools, it’s ‘God made you and cares about you and God has a plan for you, so you’re responsible for doing math and reading so you can go out into the world and use your gifts.’” The proof is not only in higher test scores. “In a community with one of the highest teen pregnancy rates in the state,” he adds, “that we have had zero is super-remarkable.”.....Velez and others find O’Brien’s intensely thoughtful nature and direct delivery refreshing, especially in a priest. “He’s serious; he tells you straight out what he thinks, and the advice he gives is always true,” Velez says. “He’s a father father. I mean, he’s a priest and a father, a man, to all these kids. And for everyone else here.” A 2008 documentary about O’Brien and St. Patrick’s, Scenes from a Parish (www.scenesfromaparish.com), reveals the complexities of building a religious community among diverse groups. “You have to win over a lot of different people and you can’t forget the older people,” says the film’s director, James Rutenbeck. “Father O’Brien knows he has to do that [and he tries to], but because of [his bluntness and] how he is constituted, he doesn’t do it a lot. He’s not a suck-up.”
Despite that bluntness, and what some people may view as a lack of people skills, many have come to enjoy his often irreverent humor. At the grand opening of Cor Unum, for example, Rutenbeck filmed O’Brien showing people around and saying, “The somewhat facetious but true idea was that this is like the Harvard Club of Boston, but with more decent people.” Even O’Brien’s mother worried about how people in Lawrence would respond to his humor, Rutenbeck says: “It’s bracing. But you have to sort of get it, and get him.” To a group of seminarians curious about how he and the clerics on staff relax and rejuvenate their spirits away from the parish, O’Brien said: “We all have girlfriends.” They were unsure whether to laugh.
One of O’Brien’s close friends and supporters is comedian Conan O’Brien ’85 (they are not related), who says, “Paul has the wit and pop-culture savvy of a professional comedy writer, and so a lot of our conversations are so borderline absurd that I can forget the realities of his world.” The star is among a group of about 20 friends and family members (many Harvard-affiliated) who have helped Father O’Brien realize and now run his brainchild, Labels Are For Jars (www.labelsareforjars.org), a nonprofit organization that sells shirts that offset stereotypical assumptions by labeling their wearers “Prisoner,” “Mentally Ill,” “Addict,” or “Rock Star.” The group has raised $6 million for Cor Unum, which serves 225,000 meals a year on a $225,000 budget and now has $2 million in reserves. “Paul is an effective priest,” Conan O’Brien adds, “because he is funny and engaged and earns the trust of the people in his community.”......
hrmjustin
(71,265 posts)MADem
(135,425 posts)hrmjustin
(71,265 posts)She refuses to shorten them.
MADem
(135,425 posts)riveting if it lasted an hour!
hrmjustin
(71,265 posts)
MellowDem
(5,018 posts)PR Pope is living up to his name, that's for sure. While the Pope may be sneaking out to help this one man program give out some emergency cash here and there, the organization he runs and he himself continue to support policies that are harming and killing many people every day. Wonder how his conscious feels about that?
And for all his talk of economic equality, his church is still far more effective at lobbying against rights for women and homosexuals than for economic justice.
rug
(82,333 posts)MellowDem
(5,018 posts)rug
(82,333 posts)MellowDem
(5,018 posts)rug
(82,333 posts)MellowDem
(5,018 posts)Especially about him. So much so, they'll call others prejudicial for judging the Pope by what he says.
rug
(82,333 posts)All I can think is that some see me as too harsh. No one tells me the Pope doesn't actually believe the things he says, or notably, isn't a bigot.
Fortinbras Armstrong
(4,473 posts)cleanhippie
(19,705 posts)Fortinbras Armstrong
(4,473 posts)cleanhippie
(19,705 posts)
Fortinbras Armstrong
(4,473 posts)But what else can he do but whinge. After all, is he likely to admit to being wrong?
cleanhippie
(19,705 posts)Keep whining. It's all you have left.
Fortinbras Armstrong
(4,473 posts)Or, in other words, not just whinging, but dishonestly whinging.
Doubtless you take pride in such things. It is clear that you will insist on having the last word, so have it and keep pretending that you are an honest and rational person.
cleanhippie
(19,705 posts)
cbayer
(146,218 posts)
Heddi
(18,312 posts)Vatican has, and do some real good in the world on a large and meaningful scale, especially in places much like Africa, and Latin America/South America, where so much of their crushing poverty, high infant mortality, hunger, and AIDS come as a direct effect of the anti-woman, anti-condom, anti-contraception, anti-safe-sex-teaching-even-if-it-saves-your-life, pro-more-babies-than-you-can-sustain, policies that the church has embraced and endorsed?
Why not do it in such a way as to inspire your billions of adherents, most of whom, to quote George Michael, see charity as a coat they wear twice a year, throw a few coins in the salvation army bucket and hey! fighting hunger!!!
THe leader of one of the wealthiest religious organizations in the world sneaking out at night to give $$ to the poor...yes, giving to the poor is awesome. But let's be realistic. THe Catholic Church is a mega-rich organization that could completely obliterate much suffering for many many people (suffering that it has caused). But naaah. Let El Papa just go out at night to do clandestine work in a soup kitchen. Good? yes. The best he can do/force the church to do? Hardly.
rug
(82,333 posts)Do you have any link to the "billions and billions of dollars in gold"?
Heddi
(18,312 posts)Because I didn't just say "billions and billions of dollars in gold."
And you know that
Yet you chose to editorialize it as if I did.
That's not being honest.
Interesting that you left that part out. I guess it wouldn't fit your agenda of implying, directly or indirectly, that anyone who ever has any criticism of the Catholic Church, The Pope, or ANYTHING to do with any of them is a bigot, a this, a that.
Save it.
But, since you asked (even though you know I'm being factual and truthful)
http://features.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2013/02/17/vatican-finances/
(This is from an article written in 1987)
"If it chose, the Vatican could easily solve its financial problems by selling some of its more than 18,000 works of art. Vatican officials bristle at the idea of parting with so much as a Grecian urn to raise cash, let alone Michelangelo's Pieta or Raphael's frescoes. ''They belong to humanity,'' says Cardinal Caprio of the Vatican's budget office. On the books, the Vatican's billions of dollars in art treasures are assigned the value of 1 lira."
The windfall went to construct buildings and to buy gold and securities. About half the Vatican's $500 million in investments generate little or no income. Some $100 million is parked in bank accounts, and the Vatican's gold hoard, bought in the 1930s at an average price of $35 an ounce, is now worth $100 million at $450 an ounce. Not a single bar of the papal bullion, which sits in the vaults of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, has ever been sold.
----
The fact that the Vatican lists its 18,000 pieces of art by Raphael, Donatello, Michelangelo to name a few at the price of "1 Euro" doesn't really mean they're worth 1 Euro.
If you are seriously arguing that 18,000 pieces of art by the world's most famous painters and sculptors isn't worth a considerable amount of money, then you are being incredibly intellectually dishonest.
And I'm assuming that you've been to The Vatican. I have. There's a shit ton of gold, silver, platinum, marble, precious and semi-precious stones there.
But eh! It's all worthless. JUST JUNK, right? WHy sell it...worthless shit from Renaissance masters.
Whatever argument you were trying to make by editorializing my actual quote isn't working, Rug.
cleanhippie
(19,705 posts)Did you really expect it to be different this time?
Otherwise, great post. Factual and on point.
rug
(82,333 posts)You're embarrassing yourself.
cleanhippie
(19,705 posts)rug
(82,333 posts)cleanhippie
(19,705 posts)Ask that doctor about that while youre there.
Or you could try to embarrass me by not having to have the last word...
rug
(82,333 posts)cleanhippie
(19,705 posts)Again.
rug
(82,333 posts)Equating the architecture and art of a 2,000 year old institution to hoarding gold is a tired old tactic. Especially when the OP is about individual acts of charity.
That's not being honest.
If you want legitimate facts and not just rhetorical points to support a prior agenda against the RCC, you'll find some here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/02/business/international/vatican-bank-publishes-its-first-annual-report.html?_r=0
Here's the complete 100 page annual report for 2012:
http://www.ior.va/Portals/0/Content/Media/Documents/AnnualReports/425x00sc399T!/IOR_AnnualReport_E.pdf
No Vested Interest
(5,167 posts)Do you believe the the Detroit Institute of Art should sell its works to satisfy its debts?
A few days ago many DUers were aghast at the suggestion that the Detroit museum should sell its treasures to help satisfy the bankruptcy liens. DUers felt that the 1%ers would buy up the great works of art and hoard them out of sight of the larger population whose soul benefits from viewing such beauty.
The Pope and other Vatican residents are not using the works of art for their own purposes. While most of its art works are in the Vatican Museum, Michelangelo's Pieta and the ancient statue of St. Peter in the Basilica of St. Peter are among those viewed daily by the many who visit each day. The Sistine Chapel, with Michelangelo's ceiling and fresco of The Last Judgement are available for the benefit of all.
You may also be aware that the Vatican Library, along with the Bodleian Library will have its ancient texts and books digitalized so that they will be available for all, even us DUers. Good news, do you agree?
skepticscott
(13,029 posts)that their vast treasures be sold to satisfy creditors. So why you would try to analogize this to the DIA is a mystery. And what was it that the Bible said about piling up treasure in this life? Perhaps you can quote it for us..
No Vested Interest
(5,167 posts)see your answer.
Back you go.
okasha
(11,573 posts)The dimwits' suggestion that the Vatican sell its art holdings have yet to make a similar plea for selling off the contents of the Smithsonian to fund unemployment, or that the Met or MOMA be plundered to subsidize WIC.
They don't seem to know what a fresco is, either.
skepticscott
(13,029 posts)Of course not. So what kind of a dimwit (your word, not mine) would think that selling their holdings to fund government programs is relevant or analogous to anything being discussed here? They and the Smithsonian are cultural repositories. That's their reason for being.
Tell us, please, what fundamental functions of the RCC would be impossible without an art collection worth billions? Which of their vital reasons for being would go unfulfilled if they didn't have all that?
"Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal; for where your treasure is, there will your heart be also."
Fortinbras Armstrong
(4,473 posts)Just wondering.
skepticscott
(13,029 posts)invalidate the main argument? Of course not. Just a silly diversion. And I see you can't answer the relevant questions either. What a shock.
Response to skepticscott (Reply #65)
Post removed
skepticscott
(13,029 posts)What fundamental functions of the RCC would be impossible without an art collection worth billions? Which of their vital reasons for being would go unfulfilled if they didn't have all that?
You have no answers at all for those, do you? Just more diversions. And since when has the Catholic Church cared about the secular consequences of adhering to what they consider to be mandates from god? Do they worry about the consequences of third world disease, poverty and starvation that result from their rabid opposition to effective family planning?
skepticscott
(13,029 posts)has to be balanced against the huge increase in poverty that results from their adamant opposition to the promotion, funding and use of artificial contraceptives. Allowing women to control when they have children and how many they have is a crucial tool in fighting poverty, one the Catholic Church has done their best to eliminate.
MisterP
(23,730 posts)Economics 101
Lint Head
(15,064 posts)422 billion in 2001.
http://what-is-the-catholic-church-worth.app-just-trying-to-help-1.aidpage.com/
"In conclusion, permit me to underline that from 1993 to 2000 all the consolidated financial statements of the Holy See have closed in the black. This has been made possible not only by a vigilant control of costs but above all by the ever greater sum that comes to us from Bishops, Religious, Foundations, Associations, Catholic entities, and the faithful, on behalf of whom I ask you to convey my most lively gratitude, together with the following consideration: economic autonomy is for the Church the best guarantee of liberty in her mission of evangelization without dependence upon the powerful of this world; it is for this that the Holy See is not ashamed extend her hand, because it is the poor and not the rich who enjoy this auto-sufficiency."
[Text from Vatican]
(July 06, 2001) © Innovative Media Inc.
http://www.zenit.org/en/articles/economic-report-of-the-holy-see-for-2000
rug
(82,333 posts)For 2011.
And there are only a quarter as many U.S. citizens.
