I see on the front cover of a Catholic publication a picture of the Pope in his summer palace.
The vast wealth of the Catholic Church must be on the conscience of the Pope all the time as he considers how it all so greatly contrasts with the impecunious state of its Founder who said “Foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man hath nowhere to lay his head.”
And who warned over and over against the dangers of riches.
One true Catholic, St Francis of Assisi, tried to follow Christ’s teaching by giving away all he had in a vow of poverty. Yet what did his followers do on his death? They built a hugely expensive basilica in his memory which became the richest church in Italy!
So it was no wonder that the Catholic Church rejected St Francis’ cult of poverty, and burnt at the stake as heretics those of his disciples who refused to change.
The Catholic Church will be remembered not for the thoughts of its theologians, nor for its charity, but for the flames, real and mythic, in which it consumed those who dared disagree with it.
And for its incontinent greed for wealth and power which led it along a bloody and painful road which was as far away from the strait way of its Founder as can be imagined.