I wonder if the jeebus ever had anything to say about the wealthy.
I don’t have a super favorable view on the church but all the people complaining thst the church is a huge display of health in terms of real estate without realizing that most of the crazy expensive things you can find that are related to the church were built 600 years ago or are even older. You are forgetting that the church back in the day was THE state that dominated a huge chunk of the center of modern day Italy. The social and political climate was completely different, the public discourse was different etc.
You’re also forgetting that the church provides for so much services all throughout the world, from healthcare to education and all at really competitive prices because usually everything they do is not even for profit. What are you suggesting for the church to do? To sell everything to billionaires and to states that are drowning in debt and don’t even have the expertise to manage such a complex network of stuff so that they can either tear down everything to open malls and parking lots of trying to find a way to profit over it as much as possible? The church, especially in really disadvantaged areas, is many times the ONLY provider of healthcare and education for the poor and parishes and oratories are in many areas the only healthy socialization space in a world that is getting extremely gentrified and that’s lacking places where people can connect and build community. You can even enter parishes and participate to their social and volunteering activities without even being a Catholic
Do I think that there’s a huge chunk of pedophiles in the church? YES. Do I think we need more transparency in the Vatican financial statements? 100%. But just like administrations over time change, so does the church. It’s good that such an influential person is trying his best to make the conscience of millions of people wake up
Leo?
Uhmm…people give the Catholic Church hundreds of millions of dollars a year. The church is richer than some countries. I mean, I understand what he was trying to get at, but he might not be the best person to point that out.
you use the platform you have
It’s built up over hundreds and hundreds of years, now the church doesn’t have the spending power it once had and it is drowning in debt. I wish they won’t ever sell their real estate or I think that private billionaires will turn them into fucking amusement parks
ngl a vatican water park would be sick af. Holy water lazy river, yes please.
a baptism dunk tank would be fun
If only Jesus would have been as explicit about his feelings on religious profiteering as he was about his attitude towards abortion, gays, and gun rights.
Underrated comment.
It had been like 20 minutes before you replied
“Slaves? Rape? Don’t worry about it, not worth mentioning. So… do you have a foreskin?” ~Jesus
Legitimately not sure you’re joking, so I’m just going to drop this in case you aren’t: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleansing_of_the_Temple
They do more for humanity through charity work than individual billionaires though.
As someone who’s done pro-bono and charity work for several religious organizations … the Catholics, Muslim and Jewish dioceses or denominations were always by the books. The Christian-based ones though? Every single one was shady, pulled in as much money for their family as possible and a few would even pull me to the side to ask about fudging numbers with their software.
The Christian and Baptist churches were mostly criminal, if not just in a moral stance, they were outright criminal. The precedent at least had checks and balances while the latter … everyone is in on it.
They learned from the best! The Catholics are no longer so obviously gold-crazy as they once were (for centuries!), they have so much wealth it is hardly a concern for them at this point, untold billions, 170 million acres of land, and so much more than we will ever know.
Baptists, Assembly of God, et al? They have a lot of catching up to do, so they are still obsessed with fleecing everyone for every dime that they can.
Sadly, they are all tax free in many places, so the poor are still being robbed to pay for their “faiths”
A lot of this is just due to the Reformation I imagine. If you want to become a corrupt greedy preacher, why do so in a church that requires their priests to take a vow of poverty? Pre-Reformation, those who wanted to grift joined the Church and found various excuses to get around vows of poverty. But in many Protestant churches, there is no vow of poverty to have to work around.
There is no amount of charity they could do to make up for all the harm they’ve caused raping and murdering children for hundreds of years.
I hear you. But right now, at this point in time, the Catholic church ranks higher than billionaires for me.
The Catholic church is awful. ALL organized religion is inherently awful. That said, I am never going to shit on anyone trying to steer a giant machine of suck in a less shitty direction. Will he fix it? Hell no, but I genuinely wish he can manage to squeeze some good out of that abomination.
Best of luck to you based pope. I hope you manage some good.
I was a Catholic, and the church is big on social justice. I used to listen a lot of sermons about government corruption and social inequality that goes on for nearly two hours.
Is the Catholic church the biggest pedophile ring on the planet? Yes. But hats off to a broken clock that point towards the good direction, but only does so twice a day.
I was also raised Catholic. Went to school for it even! I’d say that the absolutely stellar sermons/lectures/whatever are more on track eith what Jesus would actually teach. I learned there was a lot of gray area in most things, because there’s so many different situations. But after moving away from the community that in my opinion taught religion well, I saw how much worse others are. I haven’t really been Christian in a long time, so this was mostly joining family for holidays, but some are really awful. From bringing up unnecessary things like critical race theory to straight ignoring the catechism. I guess all of that just agrees, yeah, it’s right twice a day.
With Epstein’s iceberg exposed, I’m not even sure they are the biggest.
Epstein is a few hundred, the Catholic Church has 6,000 pedos caught just in the USA.
I’ll upvote you for the sentiment, but any brief consideration of the scope of the church worldwide yields a significantly broader and more accessible footprint than the top tier of wealth hoarders. The valuation of the church versus those individuals is probably equal, though.
True enough. I concede the notion.
If only he showed half as much enthusiasm about purging the pedophiles he’s currently hiding, I might think better of him.
Amen.
That said, I am never going to shit on anyone trying to steer a giant machine of suck in a less shitty direction.
So you wouldn’t shit on someone from the trump administration trying to steer the direction? The only way to manage some good out of this cult is by shutting it down.
This guy is a badass. He is an individual. He is not the Catholic church, but is an individual person within that church. It’s extremely bigoted to say “none of it matters” because of what other members of the Catholic church have done. It’s like telling a Catholic person, you refuse to be their friend or listen to what they have to say because of what their church has done
I mean, you’re right but people do that all the time. I’m not Catholic, but I was raised Catholic and people love to dismiss me as a human being all the time for the fact I attended church when I was a pre-teen, as if this makes me automatically a pedophile apologist or something… but the people who think this way are insane and there is no way to reason with them.
Just like Trump, the Pope knows that he has to attack those like him to protect himself and his organization.
Unlike Trump, this Pope is clever and much more manipulative.
People refuse to be friends with Republicans because of what they do, so of course it’s perfectly fine to refuse to be friends with Catholics because of what their church has done (and continues to do).
Do you extend this to religions and their adherents generally?
Tbf that venn diagram is basically a circle.
This is like Jeffrey Dahmer bemoaning murderers, like Donald Trump complaining about the rich, like Mark Zuckerberg bitching about social networks
The Catholic church is filthy rich, unbelievably wealthy, and sitting on many generations of stolen wealth.
They own 170 million acres of blood-soaked land across the world, more than any other organization on the planet.
Sadly, they are still tax-free in much of the world. God knows what they are really up to
So what should they do? Selling all that real estate to billionaires so that they can test down thousands of years of history and replace it with malls and parking lots? Also, the church represented different stuff in different moments of history, it wasn’t all that bad
So? One can be part of the issue whilst addressing it. He’s an influential person, would you rather have him not say anything about it?
So? He’s a piece of shit, and his church is evil incarnate.
How about he starts paying taxes like the rest of Earth? You may be fine with thieving rapists sharing their opinion about other thieving rapists, that’s your right.
And it’s my right to point out what they are and what they do.
This is the most TikTok/Instagram politics comment I’ve ever read on here blud. The world is not black and white. If you live in America why don’t you sell everything and go back to the UK since it is all stolen land?
https://www.bishop-accountability.org/2025/01/more-than-5-billion-spent/
This is who you are defending. Disgusting
And I’m native, so why don’t you stop fantasizing about me, and while we’re at it, maybe, just maybe, stop defending pedophiles
ETA note that the study is self-reported… so God knows how much bigger the real problem really is. Many certainly lie, as always.
You really lack the ability to understand that not all priests are pedophiles bro. Your logic is like “All killers drink water, therefore water is a problem and must be abolished”. The non sequitur is huge! About the link you sent, of course they will have spend money on a lawyer, but that’s because 1. a process is needed to find out if an allegation is actually true and 2. Everyone has the right to defend themselves in court because, again, a process and an investigation are needed to find out the truth. The worst dictatorship is the one where alleged criminals don’t have rights even during trial and before getting a sentence.
Also, thanks to Pope Francis, if a priest is a pedophile, it will have to get processed by the state and not by the Vatican. The times when pedos in the church just got sentenced to 5 years isolated into monastery have ended in most countries in the world
This is who I am defending. You can use a translator
You’re not wrong, I just want to ask - pay taxes to whom?
It depends on their location.
In USA, they don’t pay property taxes, with more benefits than any secular non-profits.
Property taxes are how many states fund their schools, infrastructure, and more.
It would certainly seem less disingenuous
But if he proclaimed the opposite, it would be worse.
True, but things will never change if nobody is allowed to speak up
So?
I’m speaking up. Things will never change if nobody is allowed to speak up, right?
He’s fucking vile.
You’re not speaking up. You’re trying to silence the guy who’s speaking up. You’re also just posting something on a niche forum with maybe a few hundred like-minded people at best viewing your comment. In what world is that speaking up?
Also, I haven’t seen him do a lot of vile stuff yet, so I’m giving him the benefit of the doubt.
You’re not speaking up.
Wrong!
You’re trying to silence the guy who’s speaking up.
Ridiculous. One person on Lemmy can’t silence the Pope by responding to his latest press release. I know what my motivation is… and believe me, it’s not “trying to silence the Pope”.
You’re also just posting something on a niche forum with maybe a few hundred like-minded people at best viewing your comment. In what world is that speaking up?
You can speak up with only ONE person viewing/listening to your comment. How do you not know this?
Also, I haven’t seen him do a lot of vile stuff yet, so I’m giving him the benefit of the doubt.
His organization is evil and revolting with centuries of horrifying history, and truly unspeakable acts to this day. But, you can suck up to whatever billionaire organizations that you’d like to, don’t let me dissuade you. I like watching your efforts to defend a massive, multinational organization that has robbed communities for many generations.
It’s funny
Ok Donald. Nice straw man arguments. Is that all you got? K, here we go:
I never said you succeeded in silencing him, but you sure are trying.
No, speaking up is sticking your neck out. Preaching to the choir is just complaining.
And I’m not defending, let alone sucking up to any billionaire organisation. If anything, you are, by trying to silence the guy speaking up against them. Perhaps the only wise decision you could make after this clusterfuck of a comment of yours is to stop your pathetic attempt to frame me and stop embarrassing yourself.
Preach
I did not take Pope Leo for a comrade. ✊
He makes a good point.
At the same time, how much has religion defrauded the common people?
Enemy of my enemy and all that. With the state of things the way they are, you bet I take what I can get.
Rather it be the catholic church doing the defrauding than the regime. At least the church has a (spotted) history of helping people. I mean they shined brightly during the black death, and they are a source of comfort for some people in the final moments. That, in of itself, is noble and something worth supporting despite a spotty record.
Compare that with the regime’s looting the coffers with nothing remotely comparable.
Spotted is an understatement. Pedophilic rings and Mafia dealings forever.
As opposed to those billionaires, who do all that, but without the charity to help the social-pill go down.
Sounds like the US government atm
Yeah… Leo likes to throw bricks but lives in a glass house of billions and pedophiles and misogyny. Maybe clean up his own act before preaching.
Alright blud I’m sure that the current pope built it himself with his own money and the vatican is not definitely a few hundreds of years old and built in an extremely different socioeconomic environment where the church WAS the state and not just a religious institution.
That being said, right, I got it! Let’s sell all of this beauty to neoliberal states and billionaires so that they can turn them into malls and parking lots!
Why not take on both using the same message.
Let’s not gatekeep influential people acting in the positive interests of others just because they have problems of their own to work on
What is he doing to address the problems in the vatican?
He’s making distracting comments. Very Trumpish.
Yeah. I visited the Vatican on vacation and my only thought while inside St Peter’s was “Damn this place is so fucking expensive.”
I’m not even sure how anyone can get any sort of piety happening with that ridiculous amount of wealth on display.
And they still want women to die in childbirth and have no rights within their church.
How many pedophile priests have been caught to date? 6,000 just in the USA. This makes Epstein Island not even a rounding error.
Reminder that the Catholic church just instituted an absolute trans healthcare ban in the USA - including for adults. This is worse than the Trump regime’s laws, plus the Catholic church owns an astounding number of hospitals.
He is not a “woke pope”. This is the Catholic church.
Maybe true, but not very
relativerelevant to the fact that international companies more powerful than some nations are gaming every system they can to squeeze more profit, by the expense of everyone else.The Catholic Church is on the same level as many of those companies, and guilty of many of the same crimes. It’s absolutely “relative” and relevant to the topic at hand.
whataboutism right here ^
The first comment engaged in whataboutism. The above poster just restated the point of the article…
It’s a fair mention, though, especially considering the “defrauded by the rich” comment is pretty hypocritical coming out of the Vatican.
Why bother talking about it, though? Trying to refute it just means the people it does reach are less likely to believe the rich are defrauding them.
You can criticize an institution for something while also acknowledging that their criticisms are valid as well.
Treating everything as black and white, good and evil, with no gray area at all is both counter to reality and progress.
Because context matters.
Isn’t the Catholic church like a big tent with the pope as its figurehead? Obviously he can steer the church in a certain direction, but does he necessarily condone everything that happens under its banner?
does he necessarily condone everything that happens under its banner?
by doing nothing about it, absolutely yes.
Yes. The pope isn’t so micromanaging monarch who is like determining every other member’s policy.
You can live in the same city, and multiple congregations in that city have wildly different levels interpretations of scripture and politics that they preach. There are progressive Catholics and ones who are Orthodox.
but we can’t let that never of nuace int othe discussion, because lemmy users are Very Intelligent and know that all religion is bad, and FOSS is the only true god we should all worship at the temple of…
Well, I think it’s perfectly consistent to believe that generally speaking religion is bad and that the Catholic church isn’t exactly a monolith.
Here’s what you’re talking about since you didn’t cite it.
“U.S. Catholic bishops voted Wednesday…”
Not the pope. US bishops, bishops that look like judges from a country that looks evil.
They are part of the same Catholic church. They answer to the pope.
This isn’t the 15th century, the pope does not have the same kind of top-down control. And the American clergy are notoriously conservative and dickish, and they fucking hate the pope, they hated the last pope too.
thats not how the power structure works at all. not everything is absolutist and the pope cant dictate others faith without risking separation if its a large group. its almost like you cant do whatever you want, not even the pope.
The Pope who is, to them, infallible (at least in certain contexts) and who could very easily say “fuck no, we’re not doing that, assholes”.
yah cuz that worked out everytime the church has done that. ignorance is not a shield, its a blindfold.
Two things can be true at the same time. You can condemn evil and still be evil yourself. It’s very hypocritical of them but it doesn’t make their argument weaker, It just says that they aren’t going to be the ones to do anything about it.
This is just an empty posturing championship and the pope is the grand winner. It’s so tiring that he so much praise for saying the least controversial things that everyone agrees with.
oh but when useless dems do it everyone fucking cheers, hypocrites.
*fix it
oh but when your useless dems
I am not Usaian
Agreed. So many fickle opinions on the internet. Hate AI, oh but they’re making Lego memes to troll Trump. Hate Catholic Church, oh but the pope is criticizing Trump.
You can hate something but still appreciate when they make steps in the right direction. Progress is never instantaneous, and expecting it to be is a recipe for disappointment and disenfranchisement.
I’ll how long you’ve been on Lemmy, but lots of folks around here are very black and white about things.
Im well aware, but as I see things in full color im going to understand that they’re frustrated, but at least working on pushing for a better future for everyone. So im not just going to give up and assume they’re all horrible people who I should ignore and instead try my best to work with them towards that better future.
That’s the spirit!
Why are you hijacking and denouncing a post about the pope doing good with trans politics, he didnt even order that to happen, Your country is falling apart and this is what your focused on?? People are lossing they’re livelihoods and loosing the ability to feed themselves and their family and you going “well some of them don’t like trans people” grow the hell up.
I don’t think the Catholic Church owns hospitals, but I could be wrong. I think the main model you see today is that hospital systems can claim tax exempt (nonprofit) status by aligning to the Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services (ERDs). Under the ERDs, the church is able to enforce its religious beliefs in healthcare, such as the ones on trans healthcare. While that is bad, there are parts of the ERD that are tied into providing more community service and ensuring compassionate care for our least privileged communities.
I don’t think the Catholic Church owns hospitals
I don’t know how valid this is or what their source is, but I found this saying that in the US alone forty-six states have Catholic-owned hospitals, with 14% of the hospital beds under Catholic ownership, exceeding 40% of the beds in some states. The same source says “15.8 percent of all short-term acute care hospitals in the United States are Catholic-owned or are affiliated with a Catholic system.”
Take that estimate for what it’s worth, they didn’t name their sources, but those figures actually seem a bit conservative, and not at all out of the realm of possibility. Whether it’s outright ownership or just the maintenance and operation of hospitals and other healthcare organizations, the Catholic Church is the largest non-government provider of health care services in the world.
I cant believe Im agreeing with the Pope and Im on Irans side in a war… but here we are
Things are getting WEIRD
The right will be very mad about this
Which I really don’t understand. I mean didn’t the Pope say quite specifically and direct, that he wasn’t talk about the US, when he warned about “the whims of the rich and powerful”?
And the Catholic Church is one of the richest bodies in the world.
So once again the pope doesn’t name names. He has the power to make statements against Trump and his shit, but dances around the issues instead.
because even the church is susceptible to legal action.
this was an official decree from the church. you can’t just openly accuse individuals because you want to, that’s how you get sued.
just because you can kick one person’s ass doesn’t mean you go around looking for a fight from everyone.
And then the Trump administration would have to prove him false. Wonder how well that would for them. If you are afraid of being sued then you are basically being told to shut up, but sometimes you shouldn’t shut up and must speak to the facts and name those that break laws. With him putting his head in the sand just proves that his is afraid. Which he needs to put on his big boy pants and speak against leaders that start wars and name names. We have enough people with power not doing shit. We don’t need yet another person with power to dance around the issues.
And then the Trump administration would have to prove him false.
which costs time and money. the outcome not which the church fails to directly benefit from.
not to mention Trump is a know legal pest that drags legal proceedings out decades just to fuck with people and make them spend money.
Yep nobody cares. Whatever happened to majority of people wanting to make the world better for the next generation, instead now people have to “directly benefit” to want to push toward a brighter future. It is all transactional.
instead now people have to “directly benefit” to want to push toward a brighter future
again, you’re confusing people with an organization.
organizations never do anything unless they can directly benefit from it.
And rich pedophiles, at that.
I’m almost starting to think that pedophillia may be a symptom of being ultra rich.
Like, you’re that level of status, and you want to tuck a beautiful woman, they can just send out a text and have a harem of legal-age beautiful women delivered in 30 minutes or less.
When you’re a star, they let you.
But where’s the fun in that?
I imagine having lines of beautiful women waiting to bed you may get somewhat tiring after a while. They need some forbidden fruit.
Can we please not have the pedophile CEO of a bigot and homophobic cult on the frontpage?
