One of the reasons for the killing of the late Fr. Bismark Dias was, as given to understand, his opposition to the selling of Vanxim Island by the Bishop House at Altinho, Panjim, to the big builders and also because he was opposing the big builders lobby. This Island as informed, was gifted to the Goa Church by a “Bom Samaritan” but the Goa Bishop took the liberty to sell it. Hence, the problem leading to the death of Fr. Bismark.
Likewise, many Catholics in Goa, years ago, gifted their land to the local village Churches as a source of maintenance but gradually the Pe. Vigars of these Churches started selling cheaply this land known as “Confraria Land” to our opponents and non-Goans, many times many Pe. Vigars pocketing the money for their personal luxuries. It was a pity that this land belonging to the Catholics was finally sold by the money greedy Church leaders to the enemies of Catholics.
In view of this, I feel it is better to stop gifting of any land or property to the Church in Goa. By gifting our land and property to the Church we are tempting the Church leaders to become money crazy and because of this craze for big money they opt to sell this land to the highest bidder and to our own enemies. What matters to the Church is nothing but Money and Big Money to lead a luxuriously sinful life against the teachings of Pope Francis.
Goa Church is one of the wealthiest organizations in Goa because its followers are gifting the Church with enormous amount of money every week thru Sunday Collections. In my mediocre village itself, every week about 40 thousand rupees are collected and ultimately where this amount goes? Nobody knows because concerned persons are not transparent on this. If this amount is properly utilized for the improvement and development of the local needy faithful, there would be brightness on every face of every faithful especially the downtrodden needing no begging for anything from anyone. This does not mean that we should not support Church maintenance but not exorbitantly to the extent the Church becomes arrogant with feudal mentality.
In Kuwait, we a few Indian Catholics joined together and collected from our own pockets certain amount instead of giving the same to the Sunday and Friday Collections in the Church. This amount thus collected by us every month we gave to the needy and suffering domestics to alleviate their sufferings. This we did because Kuwait Church to a certain extent is numbed to the sufferings of the persecuted domestics inspite of the huge amount of collection it gets which finally goes where? Nobody knows. It looks Bishop is the whole and sole of this money.
Goa Church is still not doing the job of Bom Samaritan. It has under its possession vast land which can be used to build small houses for the poor Goan Catholics who are unable to purchase land at high prevailing rate. Similarly on this land Church can start some small scale business ventures to provide employment to the needy Catholics because Church is a big Landord in Goa having big wealth which should be utilized for the benefit of Catholics. It is high time now for the Goa Church to come to the rescue of Catholics by helping them in whatever way it can. If Goa Church fails its Catholics in Goa then Goan Catholics will disappear from Goan soil because it is the mission of our enemies to extinguish Goan Catholics from Goan soil.
A.Veronica Fernandes,
Candolim, Goa.
Tel: 7507394349.