“Pope Francis Calls for Ending Tax-Exempt Status of Churches That Don’t Help the Needy” goes the headline from U.S. Uncut. To be fair, the U.S. Uncut website is one of the really bad clickbait, half-assed research political sites out there, but it’s the most egregious example of the most recent round of misrepresenting the words of the current Pope. Crux had a similarly poor article. Fusion ran a similar article but had a less terrible headline.
This was all taken from a single quote in a nearly hour-long interview Pope Francis gave to Portugal’s Radio Renascença (English transcript provided). Any number of topics were covered (it’s a respectable interview, in my estimation), including asking for clarification and expounding on his recent remarks regarding how the faithful should be addressing Europe’s current migrant crisis. Here’s the exchange with a little more context:
Radio Renascença: “Your Holiness, during the Sunday Angelus you made this very concrete challenge to welcome refugees. Have there been reactions? What do you expect, exactly?”
Pope Francis: “What I asked was that in each parish and each religious institute, every monastery, should take in one family. A family, not just one person. A family gives more guarantees of security and containment, so as to avoid infiltrations of another kind. When I say that a parish should welcome a family, I don’t mean that they should go and live in the priest’s house, in the rectory, but that each parish community should see if there is a place, a corner in the school which can be turned into a small apartment or, if necessary, that they may rent a small apartment for this family; but that they should be provided with a roof, welcomed and integrated into the community. I have had many, many reactions. There are convents which are almost empty…”
Radio Renascença: “Two years ago you had already made this request, what answers did you get?”
Pope Francis: “Only four. One of them from the Jesuits [laughs]; well done, the Jesuits! But this is a serious subject, because there is also the temptation of the god money. Some religious orders say ‘no, now that the convent is empty we are going to make a hotel and we can have guests, and support ourselves that way, or make money’. Well, if that is what you want to do, then pay taxes! A religious school is tax-exempt because it is religious, but if it is functioning as a hotel, then it should pay taxes just like its neighbor. Otherwise it is not fair business.”
So in these fairly informal, off-the-cuff remarks on a radio show, the Pope explained that he is wanting religious institutions in the Catholic Church to figure out how to take in one family, even if that means renting them an apartment. But he then wants to make sure this doesn’t become a business venture. He doesn’t want churches under his stead to start renting rooms and figuring out that it’s a lucrative process. It’d be like if he said, “Maybe hold a pancake breakfast or spaghetti dinner for a fund-raising event–but don’t get any ideas and think you’re in the restaurant business!” I.e., churches shouldn’t be businesses. This is a far cry from him implicitly supporting the idea often bandied about by the far-left that churches should lose their tax-exempt status because they make too much money, and that’s the impression a lot of these headlines seem to be giving.