Via the Daily Mail:
Senior Vatican officials who will accompany the Pope on his historic visit to Britain will stay in a luxury hotel where rooms cost up to £900 a night – courtesy of UK taxpayers. The Government has confirmed it will meet the accommodation bill for 11 members of Pope Benedict XVI’s entourage during the visit from September 16-19. The Government has also decided to give all 11 a daily spending allowance of £150 for the trip. The money has been set aside for expenses such as food, dry cleaning, UK telephone calls and drinks – as long as they are not from the hotel mini-bar. The disclosure will exacerbate concerns about the rising cost of the four-day visit, which is already costing UK taxpayers £12million – 50 per cent more than originally intended…The hotel is close to Westminster and boasts a swimming pool and 24-hour room service. It will cater for the spiritual needs of the party by allowing a chapel to be set up in its private dining room. The Pope himself will stay in the Papal Nuncio’s residence at Wimbledon,
South-West London.
So far as the papal entourage is concerned, the only vow of poverty, it seems, is the one being imposed on the British taxpayers. As for that whole “catering for the spiritual needs” thing, well, you’d think that that was something that the Vatican folk could arrange for themselves.
And then there’s this, via the Independent:
With just over a month to go before the Pope arrives in Britain, the Catholic Church is facing a £2.6m shortfall in donations needed to pay for the visit. The Church officially needs to raise £7m to pay for the pastoral elements of Pope Benedict’s state visit, although sources involved in organising the trip have told The Independent that the final bill will be closer to £8m. So far the Catholic Church in England, Wales and Scotland has raised just £5.1m with the vast majority – £4m – coming from wealthy private and corporate donors. Just £1.1m has been given through individual collections at Mass – the equivalent of £1.27 for each regular mass-going Catholic.
The difficulty that the Church has had in soliciting donations from its own faithful reflects a growing fear that Benedict’s visit is unlikely to generate the sort of papal hysteria that swept Britain in 1982 when his predecessor, John Paul II, was greeted by more than 2 million Catholics and non-Catholics alike.
“I wouldn’t want to say that the reaction has been lukewarm but it certainly hasn’t been red hot,” says Clifford Longley, columnist for The Tablet. “I noticed in my own parish that they still have tickets available for the Hyde Park vigil and the Newman beatification. We’re not in a situation where people are queuing around the block for tickets.”
How surprising.
Actually, Andrew, only those who are members of a religious order take a vow of poverty. Diocesan priests and deacons (who would account for the bulk of the staff) and the lay staff do not.
While one might argue as to whether the plans are appropriate (and who selected the the thought process of whatever person made those plans), the basis for your argument is an inappropriate one.
And since the Vatican is also a country in addition to being the seat of a religious leader, the question which ought to be asked is whether or not the arrangements differ substantially from those made for senior government officials accompanying other visiting heads of state.
Rhymes With Right, I’m afraid that I don’t (altogether) agree.
The ‘vow of poverty’ point was intended more as metaphor than anything else (I don’t think that the cost of the visit will actually *impoverish* the British taxpayer), but the underlying principle remains good: the Vatican is, as you correctly say, a state, but one primarily defined by an ideology that, amongst other things, emphasizes the need for self-sacrifice and austerity. If you talk the talk, you should walk the walk. There are plenty of church properties where these folk could stay – safely and cheaply. They should do so.
I should add that even stronger criticisms can be made of the arrangements surrounding official visitors from “socialist” countries, visitors who impose(in a way that the Vatican does not) austerity on others, but do not live it themselves. Realpolitik, however, sometimes has to trump fairness.
But Realpolitik is irrelevant in this case. In fact, I can see no meaningful British national interest being served by structuring the upcoming papal arrival as a state visit. The pope is an immensely important spiritual leader, and I can see the rationale for a pastoral visit on the lines of John Paul II’s highly successful trip to the UK back in the 1980s, but quite why it should be dressed up as a *state* occasion is beyond me, particularly in these financially-stretched times.
There’s no real problem here, just get all the papal visitors to charge everything to their PayPal accounts (eBay’s PayPal, that is) and then afterwards claim that none of the goods/services ever arrived. That way you can get the goods/services and never have to pay for them.
It’s a great PayPal system. Being a payer, I’m looking forward to Mastercard/Visa, on behalf of all their underlying financial institutions, also adopting the same simple mediation policy. Of course, I’m not sure how the PayPal merchant payees will feel about such machinations. Then, they can always take the matter up with PayPal. Ho, Ho, Ho, …
http://forums.auctionbytes.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=23309
“… the only vow of poverty, it seems, is the one being imposed on the British taxpayers.”
HAH – through the eye of a needle and all that.