Billionaire’s warning to Francis

Kenneth Langone, founder of the Home Depot megastore company, who is worth an estimated US$2.1 billion, has told Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the Archbishop of New York, that an anonymous donor is considering withholding a seven-figure donation towards New York’s St Patrick’s Cathedral, because of the Pope’s comments about the rich.

Mr Langone, 78, a devout Catholic, reportedly dislikes comments aimed at the rich in Francis’ apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium, calling the statements “exclusionary”. Pope Francis criticised a “culture of prosperity” that leads some to become “incapable of feeling compassion for the poor” and blamed ideologies that “defend the absolute autonomy of the marketplace and financial speculation”.

Mr Langone said he has raised the issue more than once with Cardinal Dolan. “I’ve told the cardinal, ‘Rich people in one country don’t act the same as rich people in another country’,” he said. “You get more with honey than with vinegar.”

Cardinal Dolan told Canada’s CNBC he had heard from Mr Langone and had said, “‘Well, Ken, that would be a misunderstanding of the Holy Father’s message. The Pope loves poor people. He also loves rich people … We’ve got to correct to make sure this gentleman understands the Holy Father’s message properly’.”

The United States ranks no. 1 in the Charities Aid Foundation’s most recent World Giving Index.

n More than 50 Catholic educators signed a letter to the Catholic University (CUA) president John Garvey, raising questions about the university’s decision to accept a gift of $1m from the Charles Koch Foundation, writes Michael Sean Winters.
The gift was awarded to the university’s new business school for the study of “principled entrepreneurship”.

“The Koch brothers are billionaire industrialists who fund organisations that advance public policies that directly contradict Catholic teaching on a range of moral issues from economic justice to environmental stewardship,” the letter stated. “As you well know, Catholic Social Teaching articulates a positive role for government, an indispensable role for unions, just tax policies, and the need for prudent regulation of financial markets in service of the common good. We are concerned that by accepting such a donation you send a confusing message to Catholic students and other faithful Catholics that the Koch brothers’ anti-government, Tea Party ideology has the blessing of a university sanctioned by Catholic bishops.”

The CUA issued an unusually stern rebuttal: “The letter is presumptuous … [it seeks] to instruct the Catholic University of America’s leaders about Catholic Social Teaching, and to do so in a manner that redefines the Church’s teaching to suit [the writers’] own political preferences,” the university stated.