Page 18 - IAV Digital Magazine #438

iAV - Antelope Valley Digital Magazine
The Pope Is Giving Away A White And Gold Lamboghini Because Of ISIS
By Jack Moore
Pope Francis is known for his modest taste in transportation, eschewing his "Popemobile" for a small, black Fiat 500. So when Lamborghini hand- ed him a papal gold and white Huracan, there was little chance that Vatican City natives would see the pontiff perform- ing donuts in St. Peter’s Square.
Instead, he is to auction off the lux- ury sports car to raise money for charity, specifically to help Christian communities dev- astated by the Islamic State mili-
tant group (ISIS) in Iraq.
Money raised will fund the Nineveh Plains Reconstruction Project, a home for women who were victims of trafficking at the hands of the jihadi group.
Francis blessed the special-edition car in a Vatican City ceremony on Wednesday. The value of a typical Huracan in Europe is around €200,000 ($236,000).
But at auction, with the pope’s blessing, his sig- nature on the hood, and the gold
and white design, the car is expected to ship for even more.
The Vatican said Wednesday that the sale of the sports car would help work toward allowing displaced Christians “to final- ly return to their roots and recover their dignity.”
The money, made from a sale at famous auction house Sotheby’s, will be put toward helping Christian in Iraq who were forced to flee the offensive of ISIS from 2014 onward, as well as Italian charities in Africa.
In its takeover of
the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, ISIS attacked churches and Christian shops and its fight- ers forced the Christian popula- tion of 3,000 to flee or be killed unless they con- verted to Islam or paid jizya (a tax paid by non- Muslims).
ISIS also enslaved and trafficked hun- dreds of Yazidi and Christian women, consider- ing them to be either devil-wor- shippers or disbe- lievers, which they would regularly refer to by the Arabic term as kuf- far.
This is not the first time that Francis has ordered the sale of expensive vehicles for chari- table causes. In 2014, he sold a Harley-Davidson motorcycle in aid of a homeless shelter in Rome.
Last year, he ordered the three cars he had used on a trip to Poland to be auctioned off to help Syrian refugees. The vehicles, all navy blue VW Golf cars, had personalized number plates.
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