1113
Pope says people being ‘defrauded by the rich’ in latest forceful sermon
(www.independent.co.uk)
this post was submitted on 20 Apr 2026
1113 points (99.6% liked)
World News
55623 readers
2331 users here now
A community for discussing events around the World
Rules:
-
Rule 1: posts have the following requirements:
- Post news articles only
- Video links are NOT articles and will be removed.
- Title must match the article headline
- Not United States Internal News
- Recent (Past 30 Days)
- Screenshots/links to other social media sites (Twitter/X/Facebook/Youtube/reddit, etc.) are explicitly forbidden, as are link shorteners.
-
Rule 2: Do not copy the entire article into your post. The key points in 1-2 paragraphs is allowed (even encouraged!), but large segments of articles posted in the body will result in the post being removed. If you have to stop and think "Is this fair use?", it probably isn't. Archive links, especially the ones created on link submission, are absolutely allowed but those that avoid paywalls are not.
-
Rule 3: Opinions articles, or Articles based on misinformation/propaganda may be removed.
-
Rule 4: Posts or comments that are homophobic, transphobic, racist, sexist, anti-religious, or ableist will be removed. “Ironic” prejudice is just prejudiced.
-
Posts and comments must abide by the lemmy.world terms of service UPDATED AS OF OCTOBER 19 2025
-
Rule 5: Keep it civil. It's OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It's NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
-
Rule 6: Memes, spam, other low effort posting, reposts, misinformation, advocating violence, off-topic, trolling, offensive, regarding the moderators or meta in content may be removed at any time.
-
Rule 7: We didn't USED to need a rule about how many posts one could make in a day, then someone posted NINETEEN articles in a single day. Not comments, FULL ARTICLES. If you're posting more than say, 10 or so, consider going outside and touching grass. We reserve the right to limit over-posting so a single user does not dominate the front page.
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
Lemmy World Partners
News !news@lemmy.world
Politics !politics@lemmy.world
World Politics !globalpolitics@lemmy.world
Recommendations
For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/
- Consider including the article’s mediabiasfactcheck.com/ link
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Uhmm…people give the Catholic Church hundreds of millions of dollars a year. The church is richer than some countries. I mean, I understand what he was trying to get at, but he might not be the best person to point that out.
you use the platform you have
Last year the Catholic Church reportedly generated €1.23B ($1.45B) in income. Which is more than the GDP of 10-13 poorest countries in the world, depending on which source you use.
Donations accounted for €237M ($279M) and are the Church's largest source of income.
It also had a budget deficit lately, until last year. Overall it's pretty rich, but not nearly as rich as a lot of companies are and as some people would think.
It should also be noted that Pope Leo has been pope for less than a year, which isn't exactly a whole lot of time to completely reform the Church and rid it of corruption. Assuming that's at all possible, since the Catholic Church has been corrupt pretty much since the moment it was founded. I'm not saying he will ever do that or that he even wants to. However, so far he's been a lot better than last few popes, so let's give him some time.
Sources:
If only Jesus would have been as explicit about his feelings on religious profiteering as he was about his attitude towards abortion, gays, and gun rights.
"Slaves? Rape? Don't worry about it, not worth mentioning. So... do you have a foreskin?" ~Jesus
Underrated comment.
It had been like 20 minutes before you replied
Legitimately not sure you're joking, so I'm just going to drop this in case you aren't: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleansing_of_the_Temple
It's built up over hundreds and hundreds of years, now the church doesn't have the spending power it once had and it is drowning in debt. I wish they won't ever sell their real estate or I think that private billionaires will turn them into fucking amusement parks
ngl a vatican water park would be sick af. Holy water lazy river, yes please.
a baptism dunk tank would be fun
They do more for humanity through charity work than individual billionaires though.
As someone who's done pro-bono and charity work for several religious organizations ... the Catholics, Muslim and Jewish dioceses or denominations were always by the books. The Christian-based ones though? Every single one was shady, pulled in as much money for their family as possible and a few would even pull me to the side to ask about fudging numbers with their software.
The Christian and Baptist churches were mostly criminal, if not just in a moral stance, they were outright criminal. The precedent at least had checks and balances while the latter .... everyone is in on it.
They learned from the best! The Catholics are no longer so obviously gold-crazy as they once were (for centuries!), they have so much wealth it is hardly a concern for them at this point, untold billions, 170 million acres of land, and so much more than we will ever know.
Baptists, Assembly of God, et al? They have a lot of catching up to do, so they are still obsessed with fleecing everyone for every dime that they can.
Sadly, they are all tax free in many places, so the poor are still being robbed to pay for their "faiths"
A lot of this is just due to the Reformation I imagine. If you want to become a corrupt greedy preacher, why do so in a church that requires their priests to take a vow of poverty? Pre-Reformation, those who wanted to grift joined the Church and found various excuses to get around vows of poverty. But in many Protestant churches, there is no vow of poverty to have to work around.