Bordalo II, the famous street artist from Portugal, has broken into a Lisbon location where Pope Francis will celebrate a mass next week and rolled out a huge carpet of oversized banknotes to criticize how much the state has spent on the event.
Francis will travel to Lisbon from 2 to 6 August to attend World Youth Day, a global gathering of young Catholics that is expected to gather hundreds of thousands of pilgrims.
Bordalo II, known for his political art pieces often made from garbage, shared images and videos of the carpet, featuring humongous 500 - euro $551 notes, being rolled out on Thursday in a protest he described as the walk of shame. At the time when many people are fighting to keep their homes, their work and their dignity, millions of public funds have been invested to sponsor the papal tour, the artist, whose real name is Artur Bordalo, wrote on Instagram.
The event would cost 161 million euros, $177 million, to be paid by the government, the Catholic Church, the city council of Lisbon and nearby Loures.
In January, a number of public figures and politicians have criticized the Portuguese State for its share of the expenditure, which the government put at 30 million euros $33 million in January, as millions of Portuguese face galloping inflation.
Earlier this year, the Lisbon city council forced the Lisbon city council to reduce planned spending on an altar for Francis to celebrate a mass to 2.9 million euros $3.2 million from over 5 million euros $5.5 million. Among the protests, Lisbon Mayor Carlos Moedas said that the artist used his voice to express his concerns and that such protests were normal for these events.