Sunday 13 July 2008

O to be a pilgrim

Now the Catholic Church has issued an urgent appeal for donations of blankets and winter clothing to warm pilgrims to its Sydney World Youth Day 2008 events this month.
Have I missed something here? This isn't the first such international event, so the Church should have been able to anticipate this need arising.
Could it be that Cardinal Pell was simply too mean to fork out church funds for these items?
Are Bene and George just trying to screw more out of the populace?
Fair crack of the whip, boys - you've already had over $80 million in cash and kind from the Australian taxpayer.
Time to put your hand in your own pockets and draw out the readies for these 'pilgrims'.
In case you hadn't noticed, there are also plenty of Aussies who have few blankets and warm clothes to make it through winter, as well as lacking money to afford any form of international travel.
World Youth Day is providing one PR blunder after another.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

May be they were advised to bring nothing as Australia as usual will supply all their needs. Many of these pilgrims no doubt will be applying for asylum after the weeks celebration is over and public housing will be supplied and jobs or the dole whichever they wish.

Anonymous said...

Pilgrims were advised what to expect and what to bring. Honestly, as a pilgrim myself, I think the WYD organisers tried really hard to inform pilgrims as to what to expect. Unfortunately, some pilgrims from warmer countries evidently could not understand just how cold winter is.
Previous WYD's have all been held in summer from what I understand.
Many of these pilgrims would have had flights or registrations paid out of the Solidarity fund which pilgrims from more affluent countries make donations to or had support from other organisations to attend.

Anonymous said...

Anonymous Pilgrim,
You haven't managed to explain why the church is not willing to spend its own money on blankets and clothing.
Or for that matter why Australian taxpayers should be financing a religious event, when our hospital systems are in dire need and people in rural areas are dying earlier than their city counterparts from certain diseases due to a lack of specialist medical services.
These types of deaths happen almost weekly in the area in which I live, so I find this waste of taxpayers money sickening.
And no, the pilgrim numbers are never going to bring in a return of all this money spent, because the revised visitor numbers don't come anywhere near what Pell and his cronies promised the Iemma Government during the early planning stages.
GO HOME AND TAKE PAPA WITH YOU!