Why Francis rejected a ‘666’ donation

Jun 24, 2016

By Anil Netto
The Bishop of Rome has rejected a donation of 16,666,000 pesos (RM4.9m) from the Argentinian government to the Scholas Occurentes educational foundation, which has a network of 430,000 schools in five continents.

The foundation, which received pontifical approval in 2013, “connects technology with arts and sports in order to promote social integration and the culture of encounter for peace.” It has headquarters in five nations including Vatican City and Argentina.

The Bishop of Rome reportedly wrote to the Argentine office of the foundation, requesting that they return the donation. In a postscript, Francis wrote, somewhat glibly: “I don’t like the 666” (a reference to a number widely regarded as the mark of the evil one).

Newspaper reports saw the rejection as a further sign of the chilly relations between the Vatican and the Argentine government, now headed by President Mauricio Macri, who assumed office on Dec 10, 2015. Son of a well-known Italian businessman, Macri, a former civil engineer, is a graduate of the Pontifical Catholic University of Argentina.

The number 666 may only have been a minor irritation. The Vatican Insider said, Francis had also written: “The Argentinian government must respond to the needs of the people, you have no right to ask one cent from them… God always provides through Divine Providence.”

The Insider said it learned Francis worried “you may start to take the slippery road towards corruption.”

“Forgive me if this offends you… but this is a gentle slipping that happens without you even realising it,”

That’s not all. Macri’s economic policies — typical neoliberal policies that favour the rich and Big Business — could not have escaped the attention of the Bishop of Rome.

These neoliberal policies have been seen as an attack on Argentina’s working class. Many fear that he is overturning the welfare programmes for workers and the poor, introduced by his predecessors, and returning the nation to the neoliberalism of the 1990s.

Some 10,000 public sector workers have lost their jobs — and more job losses could follow. Officials say, another 24,000 public sector contracts.

While Macri wants the private sector to be the engine of employment, 22,000 private sector workers have been retrenched. In the meantime, the price of gas has soared by 40-300 per cent, electricity tariffs have been hiked by 235 per cent and bus fares by 100 per cent.

Requirements for price labelling for essential items like food, drink and cleaning products have been removed, resulting in traders being able to manipulate prices.

This effectively eats up 11-15 per cent of the income among certain low-income workers. Macri has also scrapped exchange controls, leading to a 30 per cent devaluation of the peso which, in turn, has sparked higher inflation.

All this has made life for ordinary workers in Argentina even tougher. Not everyone is losing out. Macri has eliminated certain taxes on mining activities and large agribusiness corporations. How neat is that?

But that means less revenue for the government, which, in turn, means it has less to spend on social programmes for ordinary people, especially cuts in education. Macri’s decision to pay US$6.5bn to vulture funds that had taken over debt has also been controversial.

In the meantime, aware that people could be unhappy with some of these neoliberal policies, the government has introduced repressive measures such as allowing security personnel to use harsher methods to disperse protests and implementing tighter censorship. Protesters and human rights activists staging protests have been targeted for “inciting violence.”

(This reminds me of our controversial National Security Council Act, a new law that was passed, apparently without heeding the Rulers’ request for certain amendments to be made.) So perhaps we can understand how Francis felt when, in the midst of all these anti-worker measures, the Argentine government decided to donate almost RM5m to an educational foundation backed by the Vatican.

Perhaps we, too, should be more circumspect about the type of donations we receive, whether for the Church or the various charities we may be involved in. Folks make donations for all kinds of reasons, such as to win votes, to camouflage environmental damage (greenwashing), to cover up shoddy treatment of workers in the name of Corporate Social Responsibility, or to ease their conscience after indulging in corruption.

When he was in Argentina, before being elected Bishop of Rome, Francis is believed to have disdained donations from the state. He preferred the state to donate directly via welfare programmes for the poor. As Jesus pointed out, it was the poor woman’s small donation — all that she had — that was the most meaningful in God’s sight.