Saturday, August 16, 2014

How Frank is the Pope when he talks about hypocrisy and poverty?

When can we see the financial statements of the Church?  Let's look and see how deep the hypocrisy runs.  Why wait?  Open the books.

How about: open the Book?  That could lead to better solutions for the poor, even though it would clearly offend a different level of hypocrite.   PB
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From Pope Francis via Reuters.com:

Pope Francis on Saturday issued a clear warning to Roman Catholic clergy, saying those who profess poverty while living rich material lives were hypocrites who hurt the image and mission of the Church.

On the third day of his visit to South Korea, Francis celebrated a huge open-air Mass in the center of the capital Seoul, where he denounced the growing gap between the haves and have nots, urging people in affluent societies to listen to "the cry of the poor" among them...

"The hypocrisy of those consecrated men and women who profess vows of poverty, yet live like the rich, wounds the souls of the faithful and harms the Church," he said.

Francis has been urging Roman Catholic officials to live simpler lives, and renounced the papal apartments in the Vatican palace for modest quarters in a Church guest house.

In March, he removed a German prelate who became known as the "bishop of bling" because he spent 31 million euros ($41.5 million) of Church funds on an extravagant residence.

In the United States, the Archbishop of Atlanta apologized for building a $2.2 million mansion to use as his home, a move that made him the object of derision and complaint, and said it would be sold....

"Their example has much to say to us who live in societies where, alongside immense wealth, dire poverty is silently growing; where the cry of the poor is seldom heeded and where Christ continues to call out to us, asking us to love and serve him by tending to our brothers and sisters in need," he said.

It was a theme the pope has been repeating since he arrived in South Korea on Thursday for his first trip to Asia since his election in March, 2013, and has been a lynchpin of the papacy of the first non-European pontiff in 1,300 years.

Last year, in the first major written work of his papacy, Francis attacked unfettered capitalism as "a new tyranny", urging global leaders to fight poverty and growing inequality.

Rapid economic growth has made South Korea one of the world's wealthiest countries, but it has also become increasingly unequal, with nearly half the elderly in poverty...
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Link: http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/08/16/us-pope-southkorea


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