During my stay in
Kuwait when I noticed there was no accountability of the money collections Church
collected on Sundays, Fridays and any other Feast day, I was totally
disappointed. In Goa at least the amount
collected is declared but in Kuwait nothing like this, nobody knows how much has
been collected and where it is spent and for what purpose. The amount collected
in Kuwait is very big. But one thing I
noticed there, the priests and Bishop live a very luxurious life using luxurious
cars and changing the same very regularly against the instruction of the Pope.
The Bishop can spend any amount for any purpose without getting consent of
anyone. There was no system as far as
this money is concerned, at least it looked to me. They spend for anything the Church collected money
but not for the charity especially for the suffering domestics though the
collection of domestics on Sundays is the highest among all. The persons like
Cook, Driver, Buttler, Sankistao and others who used to count this money are according
to one source became lakhpotis. One
Bishop there gave a clear instruction to these persons never to bring coins to him,
only the notes. That means, where to
take the coins and into whose pockets to put? Answer is very clear, Create the Judases. Judas was tempted to
become Judas because as a Cashier he was given free hand to handle the apostles’
kitty.
Then I spoke to some of
my close friends and colleagues and formed a group whose members refrained from
giving their contribution to the Church thru collection box and instead the
same amount we jointly collected by ourselves and started giving it to the poor people for their needs, especially to the suffering and
persecuted maids. Though our charitable work in this way was small yet it
served the purpose of many needy poor people in Kuwait not only from Goa and
India but also from Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Philippines. Since it was a
charitable work done in a true Christian principle, we refrained from making a
noise of this work.
In my village Candolim
in this month from 13 to 15 there were two Feats, one of Boa Morte Saibinn on
13th and 14th while on 15th it was of Assumpta
Saibinn. According to the available
information, during these three days the collection reached to around 4 lakhs
of rupees. Besides this, every week the total
collection of our Church reaches to around 40 thousand rupees.
Now the question comes
like this: where does the Church
collections finally go? Into whose
pockets? Is it to Altinho Panjim to deposit
in the Swiss Bank account or it
goes into the pocket of the local priests? Many of the priests are known to go
on foreign junket; some to meet their concubines while some with their
concubines for pleasure trips abroad, as given to understand. Is this the way for our clergy to spend
recklessly the money collected in the Church from the faithful? Why up to now
no single Church authority in Goa coming forward to allocate a certain amount
for the poor in their villages? And why not the Bishop of Goa taking a step forward towards this direction? There
are no poor in our community? Or Goa Church is anti-poor? Is our Bishop so
numbed to the feelings of the poor and their needs?
It is time now for all the faithful in Goa to
raise their voices in unison to enlighten the Bishop of Goa to act properly and
to force him to instruct all the parish priests in Goa to create a "Poor Persons
Fund", otherwise he should be dubbed as the enemy of the poor in Goa. In this case he will be called anti-Pope who
is the great supporter of poor. The
money collected in our Churches is the property of Goan Catholics and they
should get benefit of it first. Charity
begins at home first.
Thru the enormous amount
of contribution of faithful, the faithful are tempting the priests to act
recklessly monetarily. There is no transparency of this money or accountability
leading our Church leaders to act sinful with the help of this easy received money.
It is thru this money we are tempting the Church leaders to commit sinful
acts. Hence, it is imperative now to
refrain from contributing surplus money in the collection box. Instead, everyone must do his own charity in
his own way by avoiding putting anything in the collection box, as we used to
do in Kuwait.
A. Veronica Fernandes,
Candolim, Goa.
Tel: 7507394349.
