“Sell the Vatican. Feed the World”
No it's not the new tagline to Heroes season, Sarah Silverman’s done it again.
No stranger to religious or racial controversy, this time she’s got the Catholic Church riled up with her proposal to end world hunger – sell the Vatican. Simples!
In a video currently circulating on t'interweb, Silverman simply suggests for the Pope “to move out of your house that is a city” and use the income to feed the world’s poor. “Sell the Vatican. Feed the World.”
The Boston Herald reports that the Catholic League, the US Catholic civil rights organisation “denounced Silverman and cable broadcaster HBO for her “obscene” and “filthy diatribe”.”
However the culture editor of the Jesuit magazine for America, Rev. James Martin said Silverman could be onto something noting that Jesus himself told his followers to sell what they had so they could give it to the poor but "of course Pope Benedict XVI could not sell any of the treasures of the Vatican, the same way that your local archbishop couldn’t sell off the cathedral at a whim; they are not his, they are the church’s.”
The Herald also notes that in 2004 the Vatican disclosed that “the Holy See’s real estate was worth €700 million, or about $908 million at the time” not including St. Peter’s Basilica and the Sistine Chapel, which the Vatican deemed priceless and valued at a “symbolic” €1.
Interestingly enough, if the Pope were to sell the Vatican “an annual net investment in agriculture of $83 billion is needed to feed the world” so it still wouldn’t be enough.
What will she do next eh?
For more of Silverman’s oddball antics watch some exclusive videos here.
Copyright : Comedy Central UK