Pope Francis has reportedly returned a large charitable donation made by Argentinian president Mauricio Macri, at least partly because the sum included the numerals “666”.
The Guardian is reporting on the incident which occurred earlier this month when President Macri, who enjoys a cool relationship with the pontiff, made a donation totaling $16,666,000 pesos (approximately $1.2 million).
The funds were designated for the Scholas Occurentes educational foundation, an International Organization of Pontifical Right which seeks to connect technology with arts and sports in order to promote social integration and to make possible a peaceful culture of encounter. Over 430,000 schools in 190 countries are involved in the program which has drawn the support of worldwide leaders and even Hollywood stars such as George Clooney, Salma Hayek and Richard Gere.
President Macri made the donation two weeks ago, just after the Pope awarded medals to Clooney, Hayek and Gere for agreeing to serve as ambassadors for the charity.
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But according to the Vatican Insider, which is published by the Italian newspaper La Stampa, Francis wrote to the Argentinian branch of the foundation and asked them to return the money. In a postcript, he wrote: “I don’t like the 666.”
The Pope and Macri have always been on opposite sides of the political debate which is why the Holy Father was irritated by how the Argentinian press misrepresented the donation as a sign that relations between the two were improving.
For this reason, the Argentinian chapter of Scholas returned the donation with a letter saying that “there are those who are trying to misrepresent this institutional gesture … with the purpose of generating confusion and division among Argentines.”
“The 16 million didn’t sound good,” said Juan Grabois, an Argentinian social activist and Vatican advisor with close links to the pope. “Whoever thinks that by giving money, especially public funds to a foundation directly or indirectly linked to Francis, is making a gesture to the pope, is stupid,” Grabois told Argentinian media.
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