The Archbishop of Lima, Cardinal Juan Luis Cipriani, has attacked the influence of money in Peruvian politics, saying that “corruption is the negation of God.”
He was speaking in reponse to the Odebrecht financial scandal that has spread through a dozen Latin American countries, including Peru.
Executives in the company have admitted paying hundreds of millions of dollars in bribes to politicians to receive government con tracts. In Peru alone, Odebrect is reported to have paid $25 million in bribes between 2005 and 2014, which led to $143 million dollars in income for the company. Delays and disruptions in construction projects since the corruption ring was exposed have caused the Government to lower its projected growth rate for 2017.
In the “From the Faith” TV programme on 10 June, Archbishop Cipriani said, “With money, comes power, with power, comes lies. Then you start to take advantage of everything.” Peru’s politicians are failing to address the most urgent issues for the population, and are misleading citizens, he added. “I think that the population is getting cheated, there are lies that are poisonous.”
The former Peruvian president, Alejandro Toledo who has been a visiting professor at Stanford University, faces extradition to Peru. The potential connections between the current President, Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, who served as Toledo’s Economy Minister and Prime Minister, remain unclear.
In December the United States Justice Department, along with Swiss and Brazilian prosecutors, levied a $3.5 billion fine on Odebrecht, after the company admitted it paid $788 million in bribes for projects in a dozen countries.
Meanwhile, Pope Francis, in a foreword to a work by Cardinal Peter Turkson, Prefect of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, has said corruption infects the world like a cancer, and the Church must combat it by working together with society. “We must all work together, Christians, non-Christians, people of all faiths and non-believers, to combat this form of blasphemy, this cancer that weighs our lives,” the Pope wrote.
Hi words appeared in a foreword to Corrosion, a book-length interview with the Cardinal, published on 15 June.
The life of a human being can be understood in the context of his many relationships: with God, with his neighbour, with creation, the Pope said. “This threefold relationship gives context and sense to his actions and, in general, to his life,” but these are destroyed by corruption.
Corruption “is a profound cultural question that needs to be addressed”, the Pope says. “What, for example, is at the root of exploitation, degradation, human trafficking, trafficking of weapons and drugs, social injustice, lack of service for people? What is the origin of slavery, unemployment, carelessness for cities, common goods and nature?”
Francis said, our corruption can be a “spiritual worldliness, tepidness, hypocrisy, triumphalism, to make prevail only the spirit of the world in our lives, a sense of indifference.”
In the book, Cardinal Turkson explains the ramifications of these different forms of corruption, focusing in particular on the origins of corruption which, “in fact, sprouts in the heart of man and can sprout in the heart of all men.”
The Vatican confirmed on 19 June that Pope Francis will visit Chile and Peru in January 2018.
PICTURE: Potential connections between the current President, Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, and former president Alejandro Toledo who faces extradition from Peru, are unclear.
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