CNA Staff, Oct 24, 2020 / 10:00 am (CNA).-
The Pontifical Foundation Scholas Occurentes, which is charged with promoting education in underserved and poor communities, has received millions in donations and agreements with organizations in recent years, without having built any schools in underserved neighborhoods.
The Scholas Occurentes foundation was formally established in 2015, with backing from Pope Francis, who has encouraged throughout his pontificate a “poor Church for the poor.” In 2015 two arms of the foundation were registered, one in Argentina and one in Spain, and were recognized by Pope Francis with the title “Foundation of Pontifical Law.”
Among the foundation’s purposes are “to promote, improve education and achieve the integration of communities, with a focus on those with fewer resources”, as well as “promote awareness campaigns on human values.”
The organization, focused on education, has not erected or established any schools. It has instead established numerous headquarters offices and reached agreements giving it a presence in schools and universities.
The “University of Sense,” one of Schola Occurentes’ most recent projects, has among its exhibitors well-known supporters of the legalization of abortion and promoters of gender ideology in the world.
The University of Sense project is designed, according to its website, “ to educate in the ultimate responsibility of every human being: to listen to what surrounds us – to listen to the other, to the earth, to life – to give to each moment an original response – that of a new story, that of a new culture. To educate on the possibility of jumping into the open, to fulfill the call of life: the unfolding of its mystery that offers us meaning. Sense that each one names unique and, therefore, that each one embodies beauty.”
Among presenters in the project are the writer Luisa Valanzuela and the philosopher Darío Sztajnszrajber, who have publicly spoken in favor of abortion, and a priest, Fr. Hugo Mujica, who has lamented that Pope Francis has not lived up to expectations of liberalizing sacramental discipline in the Church.
At the end of September, the Catholic University of Valencia in Spain agreed to be the official headquarters of the University of Sense.
The University of Sense is one part of a very broad Scholas Occurentes network.
According to its website, Scholas Occurrentes has offices in Argentina, Chile, Vatican City, Colombia, Spain, the United States, Haiti, Japan, Italy, Mexico, Mozambique, Panama, Paraguay, Portugal and Romania. Its presence extends to a “network in 190 countries, integrating more than 400,000 educational centers and reaching more than one million children and young people around the world,” the website says.
The Scholas Occurrentes board of trustees consists of José María del Corral as president, the Argentine member of the Vatican curia Bishop Marcelo Sánchez Sorondo as vice president, Enrique Adolfo Palmeyro as secretary, and Marta Simoncelli as vice secretary.
The support of Pope Francis has allowed Scholas Occurrentes , despite its short existence, to enter into agreements and receive donations from large companies and high-level public institutions.
In each of its public financial statements for 2016, 2017, and 2018 there is an agreement with Football Club Barcelona, Lionel Messi’s team, valued each year at 30,000 euros. In the 2019 economic report, the 30,000 euros from FC Barcelona were recorded as a donation. Another Spanish sports team, Club Atlético de Madrid, donated 460,000 euros in 2017.
In the organization’s 2015 financial statement, the Pontifical Academy of Sciences is recorded to have made a donation of about 324,000 euros.
In 2019 the organization also registered an agreement with the Ministry of Education of Haiti, for 323,951 euros. In the same year, it also received a donation from the Air Europa airline for about 735,000 euros,
Scholas also has an agreement of almost one million euros with Origen Worldwide, a marketing and communication company based in Madrid, Spain.
Other public and private organizations with which Scholas has entered into agreements or received donations include Paul David Hewson, the singer and vocalist of the rock band U2 known as Bono; the Santander Bank; the Government of the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires; PricewaterhouseCoopers, one of the world’s leading consulting firms; Disney Worldwide; the Mexican Agency for international cooperation for development; the Office of the First Lady of the Dominican Republic; the Inter-American Development Bank; Mercedes Benz Argentina; Microsoft and the San Pablo CEU University Foundation.
According to reports not included in the officially published financial statements, Scholas Occurrentes has used millions to pay unspecified fees, and hundreds of thousands to support its offices and the travel of its workers.
According to the document entitled “Fundación Scholas Ocurrentes – Scholas Consolidado (USD): Scholas Argentina. Statement of income and expenses from Jan 2016 to Dec 2016,” the organization spent in that year, only in the Argentine headquarters, almost $5.2 million dollars in “professional fees ” and another million in “temporary fees.”
The document also indicates that more than $448,000 were used for “salaries and social charges.”
In “office rentals”, Scholas Occurrentes spent more than $324,000 that year. Another $300,000 went to mobile telephone expenses.
As total income, “gross profit”, the pontifical foundation registered that year in its Argentine headquarters more than $12 million.
In its “Abbreviated Report as of December 31, 2017”, which is not published on the group’s website, Scholas Occurrentes indicates that it allocated 903 thousand euros to “travel expenses” in 2016 and more than 912 thousand euros in 2017.
According to the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, 30.8% of the population of Latin America lives in poverty, below the threshold of $1.90 per day.
According to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), 14 million children and adolescents between 7 and 18 years of age are out of the educational system in Latin America.
It is not clear how the projects offered by Scholas Occurents intend to address those populations.
Among the events that can be found in the 2019 Scholas yearbook are concerts, camps, a project “Programming for Peace” that does not explain how students from low-income schools could access technology, as well as an “Online Marathon on Bullying and Cyberbullying.”
The organization’s projects, including the University of Sense, offer online programs, but do not address how those in the world’s poorest groups, which disproportionately lack internet access, should participate.
A UNICEF report from August this year revealed that ” at least a third of school-age children around the world did not have access to distance education during the closure of schools due to COVID-19.”
One of the main causes for the lack of access to distance education during the COVID-19 pandemic in Mexico, one of the countries where Scholas Occurrentes has installed a headquarters, was “ the lack of a computer or internet ”, according to a study carried out by the Universidad Iberoamericana .
According to UNICEF, the “minimum percentage of school-age children without access to distance education” is above 40% in Africa, while in South Asia it is 38%. In Eastern Europe and Central Asia it is at 34%, while in Latin America and the Caribbean at 9%.
In total, the United Nations organization indicated, there are 463 million minors who cannot access distance education around the world.
ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner, contacted Scholas Occurrentes on September 15 , through Virginia Priano, director of communications for the pontifical foundation.
After two weeks, with several exchanges of emails, WhatsApp messages and phone calls, the organization’s executives did not respond to questions from ACI Prensa about pro-abortion and gender ideology speakers convened for the University of Sense.
On September 29, after the publication of an article on the organization’s classes, ACI Prensa sent new questions to Virginia Priano, this time about the financial management and considerable expenses of Scholas Occurrentes in fees, travel, offices and telephony.
Priano sent a brief greeting message to ACI Prensa on September 30 via WhatsApp, but was not in contact with ACI Prensa again. Days later, the Argentine telephone number through which the communication had been made became inactive. Calls and messages to the Italian telephone of the director of communications of Scholas Occurrentes have not been answered, as well as the various emails sent this month.
ACI Prensa asked Scholas Occurentes how it would explain to poor families with limited access to education that an organization encouraged by the pope to undertake education initiatives has spend millions on fees, and hundreds of thousands on offices and telephones.
ACI Prensa also asked whether the group will develop a specific program for the construction of schools and access to education for poor minors or a scholarship program. It also asked the cost of the University of Sense, and how much Scholas Occurrentes paid to the consulting firm PriceWaterhouseCoopers design of the Ágora Project.
Among other internal documents of Scholas Occurrentes to which ACI Prensa had access is the “Ágora Project. Creation of a World Social Network based on Education: Scholas,” which dates back to 2015 and is marked “strictly private and confidential.”
The Ágora Project proposes a growth and financing model for Scholas Occurentes that sheds light on its current operation.
In 2015, PriceWaterhouseCoopers pointed out that the Scholas fundraising model had been generated “spontaneously and opportunistically”, which is why it proposed new mechanisms to achieve “continue with Scholas’ activity, consolidate the countries in which they are present and invest in the generation of other sources of financing. ”
In one of its first pages, the project acknowledges that “the pope is a key asset for Scholas and therefore a development model is necessary that allows Scholas Global to have broad control over the use of his image in all its chapters / venues.”
For this reason, the document indicates, it is important “to maintain control over the image and reputation of the Foundation and the Pope.”
“Avoiding reputational risk is, for Scholas (…) a priority task,” the confidential document reads.
A version of this report was first published as a series by ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.
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“ The archbishop said that “there is a philosophy of the simple daily life of the people that we have to take up again.””
This, like everything else the archbishop said on the subject, is utter and unmitigated drivel.
If he has such a poor view of the priesthood, he must be a lousy priest himself and is judging based on himself. Perhaps he should have the decency to resign and go run a parish.
Excellent comment, Lesie. I enjoy reading all your comments in the CWR. May God bless you and keep you and grant you his peace.
A man with no religious faith believes he can recreate the innate faculties of creation. When I argue with numbskull pro-aborts who call themselves “pro-choice,” I point out that they can not be “for” that which is already an innate quality of human existence. One can not be pro-choice anymore than they can be pro-eyeball or pro-earlobe. Similarly, this numbskull of a bishop can not figure out that he can not make people “more egalitarian.” We already are all equal before God, despite having different responsibilities and obligations in life. Only a non-believer can not figure out something so self-evident.
Another Commie Rat Hippie Bishop trying to “update” his flock to the seventies, whether they want to or not.
This so-called bishop is a servant of the spirit of anti-Christ, who falsely pursued ordination as priest and bishop, and lives now only to destroy the Holy Eucharist.
Men like this Bishop are counterfeit men, living double lives as parasites eating the Church alive from the inside. This Bishop and others like him should be stripped of office and laicized, opposed with fasting and prayer, and confronted as commanded by Jesus in Matthew 18, and if he refuses to admit his apostasy, he should be publicly excommunicated.
A Church that believes in the death and resurrection of Jesus would never allow such a man to speak like this from a Bishop’s chair.
He might just be a lunatic! What credibility would these “LayPastors” have and what would happen to the credibility of our Church?
The Church in Lima would be Protestant if that ever happened.
If you keep changing your country’s constitution, you’re going to run into problems.
I agree that priests have a tremendous amount of responsibility and need more priests in the parishes. But aren’t parishes shrinking? And isn’t the reason for celibacy so that bishops/priests can focus on feeding the sheep? Maybe if there were more bishops/priests being true pastors representing Christ instead of being focused on personal, political, or far left “equality” agendas, the parishes would flourish again – the Church would flourish again.
We saw what has happened to mainline Protestant churches when laity take over…they’re the churches with gay pride flags hanging next to their Christian flags…they’re the churches that support abortion and question the fundamental dogmas of the historic Church…they’re the churches that push far left ideologies. Of course I’m not sure our current bishops/priests (in general) are doing a better job at leading.
Should this man be an archbishop? I sounds like to me he wants layman to act in the person of priests which are “in persona Christi”. Am I readying this correctly.
His whole article is ridiculous and should NOT be said, especially by an archbishop!
Let us remember, Christ did NOT give the keys of heaven and the power to loose and bind on earth which will be loosed and bound in heaven, to a ““synodality”. He gave it to Peter and only Peter!
Next thing you know he will be having lay persons hearing confessions and saying Mass.
The word for this protestantism. The «poor» must be getting quite sick of being invoked for every initiative proposed by ageing prelates who remember Che Guevara.
That those who offer the Holy Sacrifice, indeed the Holy Sacrifice itself are secondary to this Great Religious Reset is evident.
Leslie I think you miss the broader issue here. The question is what is a priest and what is his main duties. A priest for sure is ordained for the Sacramental life of the Church. Many a spiritual Godly priest has been destroyed because they had no administrative skills. There are plenty of people in a parish who have expertise to worry about leaking roofs , heating and cooling problems etc. The bills that need to be paid and plenty of good capable people who can run the secretarial issues of a parish. Many parishes already have Business Managers to run the business side of a parish.
To me this upgrading the priesthood not lowering it.Just my two cents.
But…who’s gonna control the money? That seems to be paramount in the Church these days.
Or maybe “the broader point” is that a fill-in groundskeeper should not be called a “pastor.”
I agree with you, but many of us can already see where this will be heading. We are already at the mercy of our “pastoral assistant administrators” who just don’t have the parish’s best interests at heart. They wind up controlling everything to their own advantage and then we can never appeal to the “real” pastor, because he abdicates most of his decision-making powers to some ignorant wannabe priest.
Slight correction: “Wannabe priestess”
Haha! Yes, Dave, I stand corrected!
Great idea! NOT. Soon you’ll be able to name your diocesan church Congregationalist. Why stop at lay pastors on the parish level? Why not do away with bishops altogether and have laymen and women running the diocesan church? In fact, why not have a layman or woman be Pope since Francis has dispensed with his title as Vicar of Christ. I think it’s time to rename the Catholic Church and call it the Church of LCD…the Church of the Least Common Denominator.
Unfortunately. The Peruvian bishop has socialist ideas and is supportive of the new “president” (a communist linked to shinning path a el know terrorist group) whose election was questionable and surrounded by fraud.
Disconcerting is a woman presenting herself at the podium prior to Mass who announces that she’s the Leader, then after lengthy quoting of what’s already in the bulletin announces the Gospel passage, paraphrases it, then gives a brief but detailed homily. Asks for silence. Then begins reading the entrance psalm. Finally the priest enters as if a mere matter of consequence. Now it gets worse. At least in Lima. Either a priest is by ordination a pastor of the faithful or he’s not. By Christ’s transference of authority to the Apostles he alone has the authority to shepherd. Archbishop Castillo suffers the false magnanimity that priestly authority is pompous. That the Church instead of reaching toward the starry heavens should be flat and obsequious. Canon law allows bishops to entrust the pastoral care of a parish to a deacon, a person, or community of persons”. Added however is the admonition that the bishop “is to appoint some priest provided with the powers and faculties of a pastor to direct pastoral care.” This latter is too often ignored by bishops. Bishops seem more concerned with financial management and meeting more basic pastoral needs like manpower, rather than the canonical attachments that provide for better pastoral management. It downgrades the office of presbyter disheartening to many and likewise reduces laity appreciation of his role.
Fr. Peter Morello, I, for a time, was attending Mass at a parish where a nun read the Gospel at Mass and gave lengthy sermons. The parish priest was very Traditional. That really confused me. Later I learned this nun was known to be feisty and demanding. On a different but similar note, I attended a Tridentine Mass at San Juan Capistrano. I was upset that a Tridentine Mass would have female lectors. Standing for Communion only. The Old Mass and the New Mass were intermingled. I have experienced these incidents at just about every Novus Ordo Mass. These are the ones Francis should write a Motu Proprio similar to the one for the TLM. These cases cause confusion and division and are very anti-Vatican ll. The crux of the problem is that Bishops give blanket permission for such things to take place. Perhaps better, a Motu Proprio on the illicit activities of Bishops.
Much of this comes down to the same old problem. Church hierarchy and local priests afraid to assert their authority for fear of creating conflict. The church is NOT a secular institution and libbers and others of a socialist bent need to be told that loud and clear. It has never pretended to be secular, nor formally backing secular values.Recent pronouncements by the hierarchy on secular matters like immigration law add to this confusion, and has been a huge mistake.. That is not the job entrusted to them. Render to Caesar, remember? If the priest at the parish you reference was really traditional, he should NEVER have allowed a nun, no matter how feisty, to preach and read the gospel.Too bad if she didnt like it. It isnt true that having pews filled with people who are dismantling the church are better than fewer people in the pews. The hierarchy needs to grasp that and remain true to the mission, not true to secularism.
He may be an archbishop and a theology professor, but this guy knows nothing. He ought to be busted back down to a priest and be hidden away in a monastery where he can’t do any more damage with his ludicrous and anti-Catholic ideas. As Bugs Bunny used to say: “What a maroon!”
Our priests have been demoralized since Vatican ll. They no longer seem to have a ministry. It all has to be handed to the laity (woman only of course). Why would a young man who has a calling to the priesthood enter a Seminary for a lifetime of the laity being over them. I’ve seen this since the ’70s. It was done in the name of Vatican ll, yet Vatican ll never called for this demoralization of priests.
What in the world’s been going on in Latin America? It seems like things never moved past the 1970’s there. I remember getting frustrated with my Maryknoll Missionary magazine decades ago & cancelling because of the same sort of nonsense. There must be a special time warp for the Church down there. Goodness.
How come this man has not been made yet a cardinal by the Pope?
I know dozens of priests who would happily give up all their finance meetings, deferred maintenance walkthroughs, and administrative phonecalls.
I know at least one that said “if I ever lose my vocation it will be because of the endless meetings.”
I know most old folk here are fuming and blaming everything unhappy in their lives with socialism like usual, but it’s worth thinking about what exactly we ask priests to do as they manage these old, falling-apart buildings when there aren’t many of them to begin with.
Thank you for a little more perspective. While in Los Angeles I was preparing to be a Parish Life Leader, but I am now in Lima, Peru. There are communities in the Lima area, and more in the mountain regions, and “selva,” that do not have priests. I read the statement of the archbishop and I infer that he is referring to the programs similar to what Los Angeles has. I am not Liberal, progressive and much less leftist. I recommend that people making harsh statements about the archbishop read what he has stated or preached in Spanish. I do not listen to Spanish commentators interpret what is happening in the United States. I am trying to be open and forgiving of most the “news” networks in the U.S., while devouring everything stated by Dennis Prager, Mark Levin and Larry Elder.
I read the heading and went straight to the comments. Good decision.
This man was made archbishop in order to humiliate his predecessor, Cardinal Ciprani whom Francis pretended to befriend for years. ASAP Francis accepted Ciprani’s retirement letter at 75 and nominated Castillo immediately. Cardinal Ciprani had many run-ins with Castillo’s university. Hagan lo!
“Then there’s a priest who celebrates Mass for them once a week or twice on Sunday, whatever it may be; but we have to think of more egalitarian ways, closer to the people,” he said.
Please don’t resurrect this kind of thinking again. I lived this terrible scene in my parish. It’s a horrible experience and destructive. When this first started the newly ordained pastor suggested (1980) that the laity should do everything and the priest should only come and celebrate Mass. Now, forty year hence, we have three priests and they all take the same day off, while women do the Communion service and give a so called homily. Let me tell you—–this is certainly not what I would call being closer to the people—it’s just the opposite. I’m going back to my rocking chair and pray. I know God is still in the Blessed Sacrament behind locked church doors, however, my mind cannot be locked out.
Caritas in veritate when we comment. Otherwise, our Christian witness is destroyed. In Acts 6:1-15, we read that the apostles themselves chose and appointed helpers. They delegated the logistics of the charitable work of the Church to others so that they could continue to devote themselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word. As an exercise of and in affirmation of their leadership, our pastors and parish priests should be able to do the same, whether their helpers be deacons or laity.