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.