We don’t need ‘dirty money’, says Pope Francis

The Catholic Church does not want people to donate “dirty money” earned by abusing low-paid workers, Pope Francis said on Wednesday.

“Some donors come to the Church offering profits from the blood of people who have been exploited, mistreated, enslaved with badly paid work,” Pope Francis said during his regular weekly audience with pilgrims at the Vatican.

“I will say to them: ‘Please take your money away, burn it’,” said Pope Francis, who has made safeguarding the poor and cleaning up Vatican finances central tenets of his papacy.

“The people of God... do not need dirty money, they need hearts that are open to God’s mercy,” he said.

The Pope has branded money “the dung of the devil” and condemned the evils of unbridled capitalism, prompting criticism from some US business leaders.

Meanwhile, Australian victims of sexual abuse by Roman Catholic Church clergy on Tuesday calledfor a meeting with Pope Francis after watching a high-ranking Vatican official testify that senior clergy lied to him to coverup abuse in the 1970s.

Cardinal George Pell, the Vatican’s treasurer, has told the inquiry that the Church made “enormous mistakes”.