Sydney getting a little cross

Keep out if you're not a pilgrim, THE Sydney city centre has been declared a virtual no-go zone for cars during World Youth Day and the NSW Government is urging the city's workforce of 280,000 to take leave and work from home.

I’m not known for my support for religious organisations, though equally I don’t recognise the Catholic Church as a religious organisation, it is a business. Special provisions handing the city over to this organisation is ruffling feathers in Sydney and beyond.

World Youth Day, the six-day gathering of Catholics in July, will necessitate the closure of 300 roads, or about 25 per cent of the central road network The disruptive impact of World Youth Day would be as great as the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation summit and the Olympics combined.

125,000 international attendees are expected, with up to 600,000 expected to attend the Sunday mass. So far local and overseas registrations are falling well below expectations. The justification of buggering the whole city for a week is an economic injection of $231 million, well if all the suckers turn up.

The real question: When these specific interest groups like the Catholics, and in the previous story athletes, take over our lives; why do they never measure the cost of disruption against the apparent financial benefit?

The Catholic Church has a poor record of delivering any great social benefits to communities it infects. Currently in Australia the organisation is profit generation focused, from the various health care and welfare fronts it controls. I am even losing any sympathy for the lingering adherents who are little more than a dupe to justify the benefits given to religious organisations.

It looks like Australia might now be saved the disruption of the Olympic flame runs, but no one seems to have the guts to tell the pope to let us get on without the chaos his visits cause.