I guess the good news will be that the LD$ Inc will have to report to the Government the inflow/outflow of LDS cash in Italy. ...Maybe not. I haven't researched it.
“We have paid for it out of our pocket, with no help from Italy,” LDS Rome spokesman Alessandro Dini Ciacci says. “We don’t divulge the specific costs of our operations.”
"Baroque Revival..." (looks like 'cookie-cutter revival' to me)
"Floor and ceiling designs to mimic Michelangelo’s Capitoline Hill..." (you do realize Michelangelo was gay...at least they aren't replicating the Sistine chapel in the Celestial room)
"Exact replicas of the Cristus and all twelve apostles by Bertel Thorvaldesn..." (why not statues of the current 12? would love to see a bloated Packer in stone...)
I suppose you are right. If the law existed their would be more documentation.
So, New Zealand, Canada, UK, and Austrailia....are these the only countries that require the transperancy for access to the legal charity entity within the country?
I bet that this temple will be a showpiece because of all the beautiful church buildings it is competing with for attention. It doesn't appear to be one of the cookie cutter temples being built in the U.S. and other parts of the world.
Quote from article: "The Rome Temple Complex of the LDS sits on 15 acres and will feature lush gardens, and a 40,000-square-foot temple with floor and ceiling designs to mimic Michelangelo’s Capitoline Hill plaza overlooking the Roman forum. Marble from Italy, Spain, Turkey, and Brazil is being used to decorate the interior and exterior spaces. The grounds will also include a stake center meeting house (a stake being roughly similar to a Catholic diocese), a visitor center, a family history library and a special Mormon-only hotel for workers and worshippers."
What is this "special Mormon-only hotel for workers and worshippers"? Will it accomodate any and all Mormon visitors to Rome? Do they have to show a temple recommend? Do any other temples have similar accomodations on the grounds? - if so, what are they like?
There are so many beautiful,interesting and historically important sites in Rome that I doubt anyone but Mormons will care about this no matter how nice it is. There is.no way this will be on my list the next time I am there unless it is near something of interest to me.
I suspect your average Italian simply won't think about it much at all. There are too many other things to see and do. There are historically and artistically interesting things on every corner.This will be less important as opening another business or store for most.
Agreed, Romans are concerned about paying rent, buying food, taking care of their families, and just about every other thing that most of us worry about. They are proud of the heritage of their city but the fact that they live in the middle of it doesn't change their life much.
It's not like the general public/tourists can go inside and admire anything, like great paintings, statues, etc. I've never been to Italy, but I can imagine the churches and cathedrals would have more pull than a building you can't even enter.
Well... they have commissioned exact replicas of the Cristus and all twelve apostles by Bertel Thorvaldsen to be placed in the *visitors center*. That's almost as good as seeing inside the temple....
Clearly, they are hoping that having all 13 statues on display in one place will be a huge draw. But really, I don't see how a typical sterile mormon visitors center, filled with carefully presented statues, could possibly hold much interest for people who are interested in history and architecture or are used to attending mass in beautiful Catholic cathedrals.
After their initial open house tours, I doubt the Rome temple grounds will be much of a draw for any tourists other than mormons. Their "sacred, not secret" restrictions regarding the temple are going to sound very odd to the ears of tourists just wanting to take in the sights. I can't imagine the tour companies are going to add the mormon Rome temple to their tours - it has nothing to offer people wanting to tour historical spots in Italy or Europe.
Also, Mormons have no idea what it appears like to people of other denominations when they see quotations from Paul chapter:verse interspersed with chapter and verse citations to Alma, Nephi, and whomever, especially to Catholics who invented the Bible. It's all they can do not to guffaw. They think why not quote Uncle Fred chapter:verse or Daffy Duck chapter:verse. To most outsiders, a Mormon visitors center is self-parody. It's like a cuckoo in the nest. Mormon's ride the coattails of the acceptable--Paul, in order to slip in what is seen as fraudulent.
Saw San Marco, Frari and Madonna del Orto in Venice last week, and then St Johns in Malta. Now in Rome and saw St Peters. Yup, a corporate McTemple will sure compete against those!
"... this Roman temple is being built by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) of Italy to accommodate a congregation that has grown from 9,000 to nearly 30,000 followers in less than 30 years."
Do you think these numbers are accurate? I'd be very surprised if there even 9000 Mormons in Rome, unless they're mainly expats.
Who knows, maybe there really are 30,000 members [who will be on the books until they reach age 110] -- but how many even realize they are being counted as a member? And even more important, how many are genuinely active? These are numbers we will never know - even the guys at the top probably don't have accurate numbers because the lying starts at the bottom and goes up the line just to toady up and look good.
This was one of those things that would have been faith affirming back in my membership days. I would have felt the spirit about how wonderful it is that the church is growing like that!
So when I read it, I had the most interesting emotional response. I started to feel that same feeling of, well, look at that growth. Stone cut out of a mountain, fill the earth, every knee shall bow kind of stuff. And then I thought, omg, what if they're right and I'm wrong??
Then I felt, no, wait, stop and think about this--this is heavy PR. This does NOT mean the church is true. This is every member in Italy, active, inactive, maybe never attended a day of church in their lives.
God, every day these last 18 months is a roller coaster for me as I continue my exodus from the church.
Spot on though. This is a representation of every member that the corporate church believes exist in Italy. So in approximately 30 years you managed to "grow" the church by 21,000 members in a country of 60 Million people. That is approximately 700 people a year. It includes, converts, children of record, US and other citizens abroad; in short it includes anyone with any kind of membership record in the entire country and you still represent .05% of the population! What the fuck have have your missionaries been doing for the last 30 years?!?!?!
NeverMo in CA Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > From the article: > > "... this Roman temple is being built by the > Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) > of Italy to accommodate a congregation that has > grown from 9,000 to nearly 30,000 followers in > less than 30 years." > > Do you think these numbers are accurate? I'd be > very surprised if there even 9000 Mormons in Rome, > unless they're mainly expats.
Further down, the article says there are 2,117 members in Rome. That 30,000 was for *all* of Italy. There are 2,753,000 people in Rome -- so the 2k LDS make up about 0.07% of the Roman population. Yep, a real "need" for that temple...as PR.
The article states the Rome Temple is something of a "Baroque Revival?"
Come on . . . here's a picture of a true Baroque Catholic Cathedral (Santiago de Compostela, Spain) where I visited on my mission. I don't see any resemblance of a revived Baroque style in the Rome Temple. Baroque is highly ornamented.
Maybe they are trying to prove that the big stone of LDS faith rolls on. AS long as their history isn't translated into Italian it will keep them out of the loop for this fraud.
A stake is NOT the equivalent to a diocese. The dioceses in Connecticut have up to over 500,000 members. Single congregations are more than a Mormon stake. We have buildings in our city up to 25 times as large of the Mormon temple in Rome. Nevertheless, TSCC insists on a temple where the BoM claims is the new Babylon!
What a disgusting blight this cult temple will be on such a historic and deeply christian city. If I was catholic I'd be appalled. Western civilization has truly lost its way. What a travesty.
Am I reading this right??? I think he just called TSCcult catholic church...Did he know when he said "This is a day of thanksgiving,” De Feo said when Thomas S. Monson, the head of the universal church, broke ground in Rome in 2010. “I think this is the most beautiful temple in the world.”
See, the word "universal church" The word catholic (with lowercase c; derived via Late Latin catholicus, from the Greek adjective καθολικός (katholikos), meaning "universal"[1][2]) comes from the Greek phrase καθόλου (katholou), meaning "on the whole", "according to the whole" or "in general", and is a combination of the Greek words κατά meaning "about" and ὅλος meaning "whole".[3][4] The word in English can mean either "including a wide variety of things; all-embracing" or "of the Roman Catholic faith" as "relating to the historic doctrine and practice of the Western Church.".[5] ("Catholicos, the title used for the head of some churches in Eastern Christian traditions, is derived from the same linguistic origin).
This disgusting people seems to me lost their brains, if they ever had it. First they called the Catholic Church "the whore of all earth', now they want to be called catholic???
I can't wait to see if our Pope Frances will kick TMS's A$$$$!
Man, sorry guys...I'm just so annoyed and disgusted right now.
They put/build so called temples wherever they want, doesn't make TSCcult more true!!!But just reading the details droved me nuts!
I'm glad that Monsignor Enrico Feroci, made this statement "Mormons aren’t dangerous to the Catholic faith, says Monsignor Enrico Feroci, head of Rome’s Caritas. “Everyone has the right to make their own choices of faith and take the necessary measures, from building their headquarters to professsing their faith,” he says. “But for Catholics, this does not mean renouncing its principles and pillars upon which rests the 2,000 years from their faith in Christ, Son of God, who died and rose again for the salvation of humanity. I have a lot of respect for Mormons in Rome, but they certainly do not share the Gospel with us because their concepts and the way they operate in society differ so greatly to Catholics.”
I get so sick of that bullshitt. Every church should be required to take a count of how many butts are in the seat on Sunday, average that out over a year, and then compare it to all other churches using the SAME system of counting. Trust me, the LDS will not be seeing increases. I've lived in the mission field in the Southeast for 15 years (in two different states). Both of these areas are completely stagnant.
They still only have one ward in the area I used to live in and I can't see that they have added any new wards in the bigger metropolitan area I live in now. But I'll guarantee both of these places have "grown" in the number of names of people who have been dunked and don't even know they're still being counted as mormons, or haven't bothered to resign.