The Pope, head of the Catholic Church (one of the richest  
 institutions on the planet), resplendant in magnificent robes
 stiched with gold and a golden cross is wheeled into position to
 give his Christmass message. The message this year is the
 condemnation of the commercialisation of Christmas. The
 question we would pose is exactly who is it that benefits from
 this rampant corporate harvesting of cash over the Christmas    
 holiday festival?

 You see the problem here is that the Catholic Church is reputed
 to be the wealthiest institution on the planet. As such its
 holdings in shares of all the major corporations which exploit Christmas are extensive. No-one can say for certain what the percentage is that the Catholic Church makes from Christmas but we can be sure it is not in any way an insignificant amount. In this scenario we could ask, with the church so strategically placed as a major shareholder, why it is not more pro-active in the boardroom in relation to the issue the Pope has chosen to speak about.

Here is what one commentator says about the wealth of the Catholic Church:

"The Catholic church is the biggest financial power, wealth accumulator and property owner in existence. She is a greater possessor of material riches than any other single institution, corporation, bank, giant trust, government or state of the whole globe. The pope, as the visible ruler of this immense amassment of wealth, is consequently the richest individual of the twentieth century. No one can realistically assess how much he is worth in terms of billions of dollars."

source: The Daily Paul

There are many points which could be contested here, not least the idea that the Pope is actually the richest man on the planet, but what cannot be denied is that the majority of the church's congregation live in what we cutely term the third world. That is where poverty is at its highest. The members of these congregations, over history, are responsible for funding the church either directly or through the political consequence of their church membership. Whichever way you look at it the call by the Pope this Christmas to challenge commercialisation of a "spiritual festival" could well be considered as rank hypocrisy.

If the world is actually going to EVOLVE and the cause of common humanity is set before the needs of the oligarchs, sociopaths, psychopaths and all other forms of individual greed then dinosaur institutions like the Catholic Church need to adapt to the times or tread the road to extinction. The Pope's message would be more credible if he publicly declared that he would wear rags and eat a bowl of rice a day for the whole of 2012 in protest at the aggregation of wealth in the hands of a few whilst the many starve.