Cathal Barry‘The money could easily be reallocated to housing, education and healthcare’
As thousands of football fans descend on Brazil for the 2014 FIFA World Cup, Irish missionaries have raised concern at the government’s “excessive and wasteful” spending on stadia while failing to improve the country’s notoriously poor public services.
Speaking to The Irish Catholic from São Paulo this week, Fr George Boran, CSSp, said there are “mixed feelings” among Brazilians regarding the World Cup.
“On the one hand,” he noted, “there is the realisation that the World Cup is bringing around 600,000 tourists to Brazil and their innate patriotism means that people are cheering the national team”.
“At the same time,” the Kilkenny native said, “a large part of the population is critical of the amount of money that has been spent by the government”.
Fr Michael Foody, CSSp, similarly highlighted “huge concern about the excessive and wasteful spending” by Brazilian authorities.
“The money could easily be reallocated to housing, education and healthcare which is a shambles,” the São Paulo based cleric said.
Despite concerns, however, Fr Boran considers the spotlight from the World Cup as an “opportunity to bring about change” in Brazil.
“The positive side is that the Brazilian people and civil society is awakening to the reality of the immense resources that are wasted on extravagant projects while, at the same time, public schools and hospitals are in a deplorable state and there is a lack of basic sewage in the streets,” he said.
The debate is “going beyond being for or against the World Cup and focusing on what should be a future project for Brazil that no longer favours elites classes at the expense of the marginalisation of huge sectors of the population”.
Fr Boran said the scene “is improving as a result of pressure from an ever stronger civil society which needs a change of direction and the inclusion of millions of poor people as a new political and economic project for Brazilian society”.