New Foundation raises doubts

According with the Portuguese press the Grande Oriente Lusitano has sarted a restructuring process that will led to the creation of a private legal entity [a Fundação Grande Oriente Lusitano] that aims to administer the large real state of the Portuguese masonic Obedience. The GOL has a a large number of buildings in several Portuguese towns, the Masonic Palace in Bairro Alto and 80 Lodges spread throughout Portugal. The statutes of the projected "fundação" advocate the inclusion, in the executive branch of the Foundation [Conselho Executivo], of individuals coming outside the Craft. The "Fundação" will receive the patrimony of the GOL without any chance of undoing, and will have among its powers to sell and constitute mortgages over the premises taking in consideration the aims of the Foundation. Three active legal entities will constitute the Foundation "Grande Oriente Lusitano": the Associação Grémio Lusitano, the Internato de S. João and the Sociedade Promotora de Escolas. All members of the three abovementioned entities will automatically become members of the "Fundação". The names of the "curators" of the Foundation -that is the Board of Directors- will be solely submitted to the approval of the "Conselho Executivo". This has been considered a way to put aside the monitoring of the Lodges and lay down the power of the Masonic Diet. The process of creation of the FGOL has the present Grand Master, António Reis [1st on the left], as its main supporter and promoter.
The decision has created unrest among GOL members and considered by some sources, as a manouvering by "Brethren well positioned in the Portuguese Government" [Rui Pereira and Jorge Lacão] to take the control over the two-century historical masonic Craft. The articles of association of the Foundation, attributed to Rui Pereira, the current Minister of Interior of the Socialist Government [second at the centre], are required to be submitted to the Government in order that the FGOL enjoys the prerrogatives and exemptions that other Foundations, currently enjoy.
There are no comments from the other masonic entities but the unrest in GOL is monitor for some as a process to introduce a more modern administration in a Craft that has accumulated, through the years, a large patrimony of real estate, part of it, increasily, undervaluated. Another view point out that this incident expresses the posture of an irregular obedience that never cut a clear division between freemasonry and politics, freemasonry and the Socialist political party, mining one of the basic landmarks of tradional freemasonry: to not discuss politics in the Lodges, to not involve the Craft in partisanship. Make clear that Freemasonry has nothing to do with the lust, struggle and battleground for power in the profane world. An inclination that has taken the GOL allover the years through different crisis and to the public spot unfornutatly not for the most convenient reasons.