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Fr. Thomas Kocherry – Redemptorist priest and well known human rights activist – has refused a prize from the United Nations Foundation who wanted to fund his projects in favour of Indian fishermen. He explains to AsiaNews, that money comes from the multinationals who dominate the UN and who have no interest in the world’s problems: it would never bear fruit.
New Delhi (AsiaNews) – The UN “is controlled by the multinational companies and they are buying off people with ideas different their own to block all forms of social justice, instead of thinking of the common good. This is why I refused the donation they wanted to award me to continue my work: its dirty money”. The priest renounced a prize fund of 646 thousand Euros, to be divided amongst other winners.
This is how Fr. Thomas Kocherry – Redemptorist priest and well known human rights activist – explained to AsiaNews why he refused a prize from the United Nations Foundation who wanted to fund his projects in favour of Indian fishermen. The foundation born in 1988 thanks to the record donation of a billion dollars from the American magnate Ted Turner chooses the worthiest projects and funds them, on the advice of a United Nations panel of directors.
The priest however underlines that “that money cannot be accepted because they come from a group of people who do not have the real problems of the world at heart. Financial groups are now in command : they are very good at buying people over with prizes and funding, like those they wanted to award me, but in the meantime they have distanced from the highest directional levels all of those who really did something for the less fortunate of the world, to use the UN as they wish”.
According to Fr. Kocherry, “the time has come to reveal what is the true diabolical nature of the United Nations and all of its collaborators. I will go on doing what I have always done, maybe with the few resources that I have at my disposal but with a clean conscience, without falling into the trap of greed for money. We are in search of the Divine Kingdom and its justice, but we know that it’s a long and difficult process which foresees the cross”.
8 comments
amen! any link to where we can donate to the fine priest’s cause?
This guy doesn’t mince words…we could all learn from him…(-*
Didn’t have time to read through all of them, but just googling his name comes up with lots of info…one clip I saw read that someone asked him if they could call him “Father” and that he said “I just prefer my name”…he’s the head of something called the World Federation of Fisher People, and is a trade union lawyer, and won a $150,000 prize from the Pew Foundation…interesting variety of sites and stats.
I really don’t see it. Apart from a vague animus against the multinational boogeyman, and a theatrical rejection of filthy lucre, tainted by its association with those multinationals, what is the substance of his argument? What policies, specifically, does he charge them with promoting and what principles do they oppose? I am the last person to ascribe anything benign to the UN, but this smacks of the pointless and selective moral grandstanding one has come, sadly, to expect from many Catholic ‘justice and peace’ activists. That underscored need “for a clean conscience” is telling.
I share Mike’s concern. The priest is right, the UN suXorz (pardon the leetspeak), but is he right for the right reasons?
good point Mike and Scott. Now that you mention it, I am a bit suspicious. But I am sure his rejection of the UN cash hasn’t hurt his donations any.
Not a big fan of Ted Turner, but I seriously doubt he’s using the UN to make money. It’s very likely to be the other way around — “corrupt” and “high UN official” are pretty much synonyms these days.
Based on the little internet research that I’ve done on Fr. Kocherry, he certainly falls within the “peace and justice” category. But India certainly can use all of the “peace” and “justice” it can find.
Kocherry’s constituency (and I use that term purposely) consists mainly of poor Hindu fishermen who suddenly found themselves on the short end of the stick after the commercial factory trawlers started their predations off the subcontinent’s coast. After living more than seven years among the fishermen, both as deckhand and priest, he became a political activist, which included imprisonment, and staging repeated hunger fasts. MNCs are not popular among India’s poor, and neither is the Catholic Church amongst the various Hindu nationalist parties.
Kocherry refused the Pew Foundation award given to him in 1997, so there is precedent to the recent UN Foundation kefuffle. His is a street-level Christian message delivered to non-Christian people – he’s dismissive on matters of “ritual” an d hierarchical bureaucracy; and he became a trial lawyer (after several complaints about Kocherry’s lawyering before the High Court, his bishop replied that he could find nothing in canon law that precluded Fr. Kocherry from practicing law).