Portuguese Street Artist Protests Costly Papal Visit With Installation Made of Giant 500 Euro Notes

Bordalo II, a Portuguese street artist known for making elaborate animal sculptures out of trash to warn against the dangers of climate change, has created an installation to protest the cost of Pope Francis’s upcoming visit to Portugal. Consisting of a carpet made of blown-up €500 bills, which are mostly pink, the work has been installed at the venue in Lisbon where the pope will celebrate a mass next week, according to Reuters.

Estimated to cost €161 million ($177 million), the papal visit will be paid for by the Portuguese government, the city councils of Lisbon and neighboring Loures, and the Catholic Church. The government’s share is estimated to be around €30 million ($33 million).

Bordalo II, whose real name is Artur Bordalo, called the work The Walk of Shame on Instagram, posting an image showing a red carpet of sorts along the steps of the main stage at Parque Tejo, where the mass will be held on August 6 as the final celebration of World Youth Day.

In the post’s caption, Bordalo criticized the use of public funds for a religious ceremony, writing, “In a secular state, at a time when many people struggle to keep their homes, their jobs and their dignity, they decide to invest millions of public money to sponsor the Italian multinational tour.”

Bordalo is not the only public figure to criticize how much money Portugal is willing to spend on the pope’s visit. In January, the mayor of Lisbon, Carlos Moedas, was attacked on social media after his office said it would spend €5 million on an altar for the Sunday mass. The city council eventually scaled back cost of the alter to €2.9 million.

According to the National Institute of Statistics rent in Lisbon, which has been suffering from extreme inflation, has jumped 53 percent since 2017, while over half of the city’s workforce makes less than €1,000 per month, Reuters reported in January.

“If the housing crisis was an altar for World Youth Day, it would already be solved,” Fabian Figueiredo, from the Left Bloc party, wrote on social media site X (the rebranded name of Twitter). “The problem is not lack of money but spending priorities.”

According to Reuters, Moedas told reporters that “the artist used his voice to express his concerns and that such protests were normal for these events.”