A Polish Catholic Cardinal became an unwitting hero recently after he defied a corporate order, police barrier, and annoyed the Italian right wing as he forcibly restored power to a building where hundred of poor and homeless people were suffering according to a report:
An aide to Pope Francis has climbed down a manhole to restore electricity for hundreds of homeless people living in an unused state-owned building in Rome.
Polish Cardinal Konrad Krajewski, who acts as the pope’s almsgiver, said he went underground, broke police seals and flipped a switch on Saturday to help more than 400 people currently living in the building.
“I intervened personally last night to reattach the meters,” he told Italy’s Ansa news agency. “It was a desperate gesture. There were over 400 people without electricity, with families, children, without even the possibility of operating the refrigerators.
”I didn’t do it because I was drunk,“ he reportedly added.
The electricity supplier had cut the power on 6 May after the overdue bills reached €300,000 (£260,000).
The cardinal “was fully aware of the possible legal consequences, and acted in the conviction that it was necessary to do it for the good of those families,” sources close to the Vatican’s alms office told Italian media.
Italian Interior Minister Matteo Salvini, leader of the far-right League party, said Sunday he hopes the papal aide will now pay the €300,000 overdue electricity bills. (source, source)
What I find most telling about this is the response of Matteo Salvini.
As with all scenarios, there are certainly more details to this story than meets the eye. However, Catholic priests, bishops, and prelates of all types do not make it a point to violate state and local laws in order to turn the power back on to buildings such as these, or other such acts of civil defiance. Generally speaking, the Church prefers to work within the context of the law because, while the law may be unjust, she does in order to help promote and maintain social order, which is one of the objectives she has consistently tried to realize throughout history.
Clearly, there was a LOT more to this story, and the Cardinal probably knew something that is not being reported. So, he did not care what the electric company, police, or even the Italian right wing thought. He did what was morally right, which is to get the power back on to the people who were suffering, and then proceed from there.
What was the response of Mr. Salvini, who many have likened to a “great leader” in the Italian right wing, and onto whom many people have projected various hopes and fantasies?
He didn’t give a single thought about the people, an instead made a crass remark about the Cardinal paying the electric bill.
Yet in doing this, he could not have made a more insightful remark as to what the right wing really thinks about people.
It is popular to decry the evils of the left wing, and it is important to. However, what the left wing can be commended for is that they do not attempt to hide their evils.
Murder babies up to and after birth? Sure, says the left.
Support eugenics? Sure, says the left.
Usury for the people and tax breaks for the rich? Sure, says the left.
Sodomize children and receive plaudits for doing it? Sure, says the left.
Support social disorder and policies that eviscerate society to the point of collapse and blame everybody but the ones who designed the policies? Sure, says the left.
The evil is open and obvious. There is no hiding it.
The right is absolutely no different from the left, except in how the distribute their perversity. The left does it openly, focusing on economics, money, and inequality in society. The right does it in secret, focusing on race, culture, and kinship.
The result is all the same.
People have criticized the Catholic Church throughout time and history, and while the Church is perfect in Her being, she is far from perfect in her members. This is an obvious fact. Many times, her members do not practice the faith they claim to possess at all. However, when they do practice the Faith, the truth which the Faith teaches and has always taught shines through like a sparks among a campfire’s ash. Her purpose is not to make men happy or to lobby for a particular political system as the one and final solution to all, but it is to be a hospital for sinners to heal them and guide men on the road to Heaven. This is her true mission, what it has always been and will be until Christ, her bride, comes again and takes her to Him.
The Cardinal was, most likely, in the moral right to do what he did. Salvini, with all of the power and influence that he has, and of all the statements that he could have made, chose to say what he did for a reason- because like the ideas his party represents, he supports a philosophy that hates the human race and is leading the world to a war that will likely begin in Europe.
Few see this, and in a European society that has turned away from the Faith and embraced heathenry, many will turn against and attack the Church in the name of national pride, first by word, and later by violence.