BY: SWIKAR OLI
With each speech, Pope Francis is looking less and less like his predecessors and increasingly like a political leader. His latest target? Money-hungry churches.
The pope told the Portuguese Catholic broadcaster Renascenza in a recent interview that churches should not make money operating as if it’s a hotel while exploiting tax loopholes. His message was simple: “If you don’t help the poor and needy, then pay taxes like a business.”
“If you don’t help the poor and needy, then pay taxes like a business.”
Pope Francis told Renascenza, “Some religious orders say, ‘No, now that the convent is empty we are going to make a hotel and we can have guests and support ourselves that way, or make money.’” “Well, if that is what you do, then pay taxes! A religious school is tax-exempt because it is religious, but if it is functioning as a hotel, then it should pay taxes just like its neighbour. Otherwise it is not fair business.”
This news comes after the pope asked European religious institutions, including churches, to take in refugees earlier this September. His criticism extends to those who failed to take in a family. For his own part, the Vatican has taken in two families. He says they can stay “as long as the Lord wants.”
After churches have denied helping refugees upon the Pope’s request he has realized they should pay taxes too.
U.S. Uncut reports that the Italian Church, “with an estimated worth exceeding $10 billion” has begun “paying taxes on those facilities which are solely commercial,” unless it contains a chapel.
Now, maybe in his upcoming visit to the U.S., he will have some words to share on the Televangelists who are inexplicably tax exempt.
Sources: jrsusa.org, mygodpictures.com, cathnewsusa.com