May 10, 2018
Dear Editor:
For some time and from several official media, insults in form of campaigns that systematically attack the Catholic Church have been launched. It is not known exactly the reason, because it usually becomes a tempest in a teapot and the reality hides. This leaves the impression that ecclesiastics are a string of undesirables. However, we must remember that this is one of the purposes of the left and they do it quite well.
But do you ever think abut the amount of money that the institutions of the Catholic Church help to save the state? And when I say the state, I mean our pockets. Let’s see some examples:
These are some figures of the much criticized Catholic Church:
107 hospitals (the state saves €50 million per hospital per year).
1,004 centres: outpatients departments, dispensaries, old peoples’ homes, centres for the disabled and terminally ill, aids patient; a total of 51,312 beds (The state saves €4 million per hospital per year).
Caritas expenses per year: €155 million (donations from Spanish people).
Manos Unidas expenses: €43 million (donations from Spanish people).
Pontifical Mission societies expenses (WMS): €21 million. Do you imagine where it comes from?
365 Re-education centres for social outcasts: ex-prostitutes, ex-convict and ex-drug addicts; 53.140 people. (The state saves half a million euros per centre)
937 orphanages, 10,835 abandoned children. (The state saves €100.000 million per centre)
80% of the expenses of conservation and maintenance of historical and artistic heritage (The state approximately saves between €32,000 and €36,000 million per year). Meanwhile, we must add that almost all people who work or collaborate with Manos Unidas, Caritas, etc.…are volunteers without a salary. This is true, although it is a surprise for some people; there are people who work for others without asking for money. How much is their work value? In addition, we have not mentioned educational centres, food banks, etc., with which the state can approximately save €15,000 million per year.
This is the reason why the state continues to give some aid to the Catholic Church.
What is amazing is that nobody (or very few people) knows that this saving is essential for the Spanish economy to go well…
All of this represents an overall saving of some €50,000 million per year. This translated into old pesetas represents a surprising amount of more than eight billion three hundred million. It is amazing, isn’t it?
As counterpart, how many soup kitchens for indigent people have the Workers’ Commissions (Spanish: Comisiones Obreras, CCOO) opened? How many hospitals for terminally and AIDS ill patients are kept open by UGT (General Union of Workers)? Can the needy go to ask for food at the headquarters of the PP, PSOE or the UI? All of these live at the expense of our budgets and what budgets…
And how many missionaries, schools, hospitals, leprosariums, etc. serve for the world members of other non-Christian religions? Seeing this information, why are we going to be ashamed of our Church?
Isabel Costa
