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The Church doesn’t need ‘dirty money’ Pope warns benefactors against donating to the Church money gained from exploiting others
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VATICAN CITY – Pope Francis
has warned people to forget about donating money to the Church if their earnings came from mistreating others. “Please, take your cheque back and burn it,” he said to applause. “The people of God – that is, the Church – don’t need dirty money. They need hearts that are open to God’s mercy,” the pope said on March 2 during his general audience in St Peter’s Square. Speaking out against exploitation and unfair wages for workers, the pope said that God wants people to turn away from evil and do what is just, not cover up their sins ZLWK JHVWXUHV RI VDFUL¿FH Just as God derives no pleasure from “the blood of bulls and lambs” slaughtered in His name, He is especially averse to offerings from hands dirty with the blood of another human being. “I think of some Church benefactors who come with an offering,” he said, and sometimes that offering is the “fruit of the blood of many people, who are exploited, mistreated, enslaved by poorly paid work”. The pope said he would tell these donors to go away because *RG ZDQWV VLQQHUV ³ZLWK SXUL¿HG hands” who have changed course, avoid evil and work for what is good and just, like aiding the oppressed and defending the weak. “I am thinking of many, many refugees who are landing in Europe and don’t know where to go,” he said. The pope’s impassioned speech came days after he stressed that salvation is not found through extraordinary things or powerful people but through the “little things” of God.
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“In our minds, salvation must come from something big, from something grandiose,” the pope said on Feb 29 during the Mass in the chapel of his residence. People think that “only the powerful are saved, those who have strength, money, power, they can be saved. [But] God’s plan is something else,” he said. The pope’s homily looked at the day’s reading from the Second Book of Kings (5:1-15) in which the army commander, Naaman, doubted the prophet Elisha’s simple instructions that washing in
the Jordan River would cure his leprosy. Jesus also told the story of Elisha and Naaman in the day’s Gospel reading from Luke (4:2430), which triggered fury in his listeners – in “the doctors of the law who were seeking salvation in moral casuistry” and in many laws, the pope said, according to Vatican Radio. The doctors of the law and “the Sadducees, who sought salvation in compromises with the powerful of the world, with the [Roman] Empire – the one group with the
‘
I think of some Church benefactors who come with an offering ... [the] fruit of the blood of many people, who are exploited, mistreated, enslaved by poorly paid work.
’ – Pope Francis
network of clerics, the others with political networks – they sought salvation that way”, he said. 7KH SHRSOH KDG OLWWOH FRQ¿dence in these leaders and instead “believed in Jesus because He spoke with authority”. However many leaders were indignant “because they cannot understand that salvation only comes from little things, from the simplicity of the things of God”, the pope said. Jesus never spoke about the path of salvation being linked to “great things”, the pope said, but rather to the “little things” expressed in the Beatitudes and the “Judgment of the Nations”, which refers to feeding the hungry, welcoming the stranger and the other actions mentioned in Matthew 25:31-46. Pope Francis urged people to prepare for Easter by reading these two passages. CNS
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