Poverty that educates and at the same time provokes and scandalizes as Brother Francis and the Holy Family of Nazareth experienced it. In the previous article (January 2013), speaking of the Poverello d'Assisi, it was said that the poor question the Church. Now let's listen to the answer that the Church gives to this question of the poor, today, with the example and words of its ministers, from the most titled to the last in the hierarchical ladder, the priests "in care of souls", precisely those who share local poverty and hopes of the people, so the shepherd smells, as Pope Francis says, the smell of his sheep.

The example that seemed more convincing than words came to me from my parish priest, from Galliera Veneta, in the diocese of Treviso, an authentic master of those who follow the evangelical warning to the letter, coepit facere et docere, facts before words. A multi-graduate priest (in Leuven in Belgium and in Rome at the Lateran University), but humble and poor, who since his arrival has given us the example that Pope Francis likes. 

I saw him get off the Treviso-Vicenza bus with his cardboard suitcase, as migrants use. Then I saw him making daily visits to the poor and the sick on his bicycle, leaving the old Cinquecento to the chaplain. The door of the rectory was open to everyone at any time of the day, because, as Pope Francis still says, the Pope loves everyone, rich and poor, but he has the obligation to remind the rich that they must help the poor. 

Just like my parish priest, Don Guido Manesso, who died at a young age, did when he was invited by the director of the local bank to bless and say special words at the inauguration of the new place. The parish priest's words left everyone perplexed: Listen, he said, I should preach the gospel, that's why I'm here and I don't find that the gospel talks about opening banks. I read that Jesus overturned the money changers' benches, they were in the temple enclosure, obviously out of place. Then I read the parable of the rich fool, which in current terms could be referred to like this: I have a nice bundle of banknotes safe in the bank, now I can get myself a nice villa complete with a swimming pool in the park... But the Lord said to him: foolish one, you will die tonight and you will take nothing with you."

In the gospel we can find many other things that concern the use of money. There is a page where Jesus says: give to those who ask you and do not turn your back on those who ask you for a loan. But you can run into nasty surprises, therefore, simple as doves, but cautious as snakes. Bankers also have a soul, but there may be a scoundrel lurking. How can we defend ourselves? I asked Don Guido the question and here is his answer. In the Gospel we read Jesus' exhortation not to accumulate treasures on earth, and to place them where thieves cannot steal them. Implied, in the bank of the poor with good works, which yield 100%. 

On our journey we will not come across nice rich people like Zacchaeus who, after meeting Jesus, immediately established that half of his goods would be given to the poor and the other half would be used to give back four times as much to those who had defrauded, a more unique than rare case even in a Catholic home.

So who are the truly poor, that is, those for whom Jesus says: "Blessed are you who are poor"? Here they are: those who are hungry, who cry, who are hated and proscribed because of Christ, whose attention is directed first and foremost not to poverty in spirit, but to the poor. They are the poor in material goods, the poor in culture, the poor in economic and social freedom, the poor for reasons of race, the poor forced to emigrate, who suffer from separation from their land, poor due to loneliness, the uncertainties of work, those exposed to poorly paid toil, the poor in the possibility of fitting into the social or political fabric at all levels.

And there are those poor in physical energy and spiritual goods, poor in health, poor in joy, serenity, love and peace. And they are also the poor with a spirit of poverty: they are those who do not have this soul of the poor when faced with the meaning of their own existence and before God and before those who are proud, powerful and rich, the poor who succumb to violence. 

In the Magnificat we speak of these poor in spirit, who are in reality the poorest of all because God sweeps them away if they do not change their attitude towards God and towards others. God is not on their side, he scatters them, throws them down and sends them away empty-handed

We are all poor, therefore, but we can all benefit from the liberation from evil announced by Jesus, "sent by the Father to heal those who have a contrite heart". this is the happy message to the poor, the liberation from all the poverty that prevents man from being man.

Even the words of Pope Francis on this topic are within the reach of human weakness, as Fra Bonaventura da Bagnoregio, the most qualified interpreter of Francis of Assisi, said to his friars. Everyone needs to tune in to the words of the gospel, as Pope Francis says of himself: "Since I am called to live what I ask of others, I too must think about a conversion of the papacy", because the Church is not a customs house, but it is the paternal home where there is room for everyone with the baggage of their tiring life. 

This is also part of the Pope's programmatic manifesto, although it is more accurate to speak of an old way, rightly in decline, of thinking about the Church in our times, in short, about poverty today and not about that of the Poor Man of Assisi contested by his friars , because it is not within the reach of human weakness. Other times.