Catholic Relief Services Speeches and Testimony

Abp. Dolan - The Ministry of Charity, an Essential Aspect of Parish Life: Reflections on CRS and Deus Caritas Est

January, 2009

I stand before you not only as Archbishop of Milwaukee but also as Chairman of the Board of Catholic Relief Services. I consider it a singular honor in my 59 years on earth and my 33 years in the priesthood to be able to serve as chairman of the board of an organization that I dearly esteem more and more. Biased as I admittedly may be, I would propose to you that Catholic Relief Services, CRS, stands as one of the most effective agents of the love, service, care and pursuit of justice extolled by our Holy Father in the encyclical Deus Caritas Est, about which I am to speak today. If I can succeed today in making you future priests more aware of CRS' masterful work, in international relief and development, thus making it an object of your solicitude as parish priests, and of your promotion and preaching, well then this day will be well worth it.

I have come so to love the people associated with Catholic Relief Services, not only in this country, but in Africa and India. They are amazingly generous, faithful, competent people. And I just hope that after listening today, you will share in that estimation.

Enough of the antipasto. Let's move on to the main course.

You all might remember that after the providential election of Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger in 2005, the world awaited his first encyclical. And there was a lot of speculation about what the tone and about what the topic of that first encyclical might be. As you are aware, a pope's first encyclical is almost a kind of inaugural address, hinting at the themes that he considers to be most important, giving us a clue about the pastoral agenda that he is setting for himself in his ministry as successor to St. Peter. So there was a lot of speculation, wasn't there? We have now a professorial pope. We have now a cerebral pope. We have now a pope who is a respected and internationally renowned theologian. So we will probably expect something very petty. And we can expect that he will tackle one of the acute pastoral problems in the church today about which he has expressed opinions before. Perhaps something on medical moral issues. Perhaps something on the authority in question of Islamic Christian relations. Maybe something about the plight of the decline of the church in Europe. Maybe something about what he calls the dictatorship of relativism. Certainly there would be some petty theological philosophical topic that would engage the first-class mind of Papa Benedetto in his first encyclical.

It was clear that he was gong to be a pope of surprises when, in January of 2006, that long-awaited first encyclical came. And it was shocking. Because it was about as simple as you can get. Entitled Deus Caritas Est, what he simply tried to do is capture the central tenet of Christian revelation. Namely, that at the heart of it all is God's love. God's personal, passionate love for us, our grateful humble acceptance of that love, and our return of that love to God and to his people. This became perhaps the most dramatic example, at the time, of January 2006, since then we've had others, what would become what the respected Vaticanologist John Allen would call the "positive orthodoxy" of Benedict XVI. He had been caricatured as somewhat of a somber, dour enforcer. And all of a sudden we had this man bring forth, who preferred to say yes more than no, who wanted to accept the positive and who wanted to continue the theme preached so brilliantly by his great predecessor that the most engaging, liberating, ennobling venture in life is fidelity to the Church, to the person and the teaching of Jesus Christ. This all comes out, of course, in Deus Caritas Est.

He started that encyclical with a bit of a bombshell by not being afraid to take on the difference between erotic love and agape. Obviously eros, in kind of the market's perception, eros is thought of as a little bit lower form of love, perhaps a bit more selfish kind of love, a love that would express itself in sexual relations. And agape, the bromide was, well that's the more ennobling, uplifting love. Benedict right away says that both are beautiful, both are ennobling, both are part of the same conversation, eros and agape. And he takes head on the caricature of the church as being puritanical when it comes to eros. Reminding us indeed that in the Catholic wisdom, sexual love between a man and a woman in a life-giving, lifelong faithful marriage, is a hint of the divine, is a mirror of God's love for us, as is so beautifully proclaimed in the preface to the celebration of the sacrament of matrimony. And that eros could indeed be a step toward agape. It became clear that the methodology of Benedict XVI was not going to be either/or, but both/and, which is, of course, a particular Catholic genius. So Benedict would prefer to stress scripture and tradition, faith and works, body and spirit, eros and agape, eros ever reaching its fulfillment in agape. Can I share with you a quote from Fr. Augustine DeNoia, a Dominican, who used to work for the Committee on Doctrine for the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, and is now undersecretary for the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith of the Holy See over which Cardinal Ratzinger used to preside. In his commentary on Deus Caritas Est, Fr. DeNoia notes:

As everyone who has read the encyclical will know, in his discussion of eros and agape, Pope Benedict insists on the unity of these two forms of love, as well as the continuity between them. He is particularly concerned to refute the widespread notion that the Christian faith separates these two loves, and even suppresses the one — eros — in favor of the other —agape. On the contrary, asserts that encyclical, eros is ever reaching out towards its fulfillment in agape. The powerful dynamism of desire is itself a sign that human persons are made for and directed toward a love that never ends.

Eros is meant to lead us to agape, the love of God to the love of one another in the world. Now my brothers and sisters, inherent in the magisterial teaching of Benedict as is clear in Deus Caritas Est, is the rightful stress on the primacy of God's love for us. As the patron saint of our Archdiocese, John the Evangelist reminds us, This is the love I speak of, not our love for God, but his love for us. First and foremost, Benedict XVI reminds us, when we speak of caritas we mean overwhelmingly God's love for us. That's the Good News of Christianity. That God's love for us is so powerful and so passionate that it has a name. That it has become incarnate and has a name, the name of Jesus Christ, a doctrine that is no more powerfully expressed than in the image of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, which lends its name to this good seminary.

But of course Benedict is quick to show that this humble grateful acknowledgement of this towering fact, the central fact in the Christian dispensation, that God loves us first, undeservedly, personally and passionately, has implications in the way we love God and other people. And he hints that if we stress to people that they are passionately, personally loved by God, that hat will have a deep effect in their lives and will again affect the entire world. I remember once, perhaps you've heard me tell this story before, in my first parish as an associate, the pastor and I would often take a walk after supper - it was a very affluent parish - and when we would walk through the neighborhood behind the parish, we were one evening joined by a very prominent Jewish psychiatrist, we recognized him because he was so well known and respected in the St. Louis community. And we greeted him and he said "Fathers, could I walk with you awhile? And we said sure. And he said to us, Can I ask you a question? And we said sure. He said am I correct in understanding that the central tenet in your religion is that God loves each person passionately and personally? And we said, yes, you're right. And he said, "well, listen, I have respect for you, but I sure hope you're not successful in getting that message across. Because if you are, I will go out of business as a psychiatrist. Because I have discovered in my life that almost - not all - but almost all neuroses and psychoses boil down to the fact that my patient doubts that he or she is worthy of love.

That this has profound implications, this reminder of Benedict XVI in Deus Caritas Est, was driven home to me at World Youth Day. But one that comes to mind happened to me at World Youth Day in Toronto in the summer 2002. And anybody who's come to one of my confirmations, and I've had about 80,000 of them, you may have heard me sharing this story with the confirmandi, so pardon me if I'm repeating myself. Those of you who have had the exhilarating experience of participating in a world youth day, most of the time the world just sees the papal parachuting in, but there's a lot that goes into world youth days beyond that. And one of the key features would be extended catechesis by bishops from around the world to the millions of young people that come. So I was there in Toronto for three days in three different sites, I would have the supreme privilege of meeting with the same group of about 200 or 250 young people from around the world, obviously English speakers. And at the end of each day, I would ask them - we would have sharing and the possibility of witnessing and testimony, and on the last day I say this is the last time we'll be together, would anybody like to stand up and give testimony, perhaps of a powerful example of how God's grace or mercy has touched you during these World Youth Days. And there was silence for a while and finally some lady in the back raised her hand and said I'll tell you how it's touched me. It's saved my life. She obviously had everybody's attention. And she said, I'm here with a group from Detroit. I'm 22 years old and I've been living on the streets since I was 14. I was thrown out of my house, I was abused, my parents were addicts. And I became an addict. And to support myself at the age of 14, I became a prostitute. She rolled up the sleeves of her blouse and there were scars and scabs and bruises. You could see the results of the needles. She said, "About three of four months ago, the youth group in my parish invited me to come in. And they invited me to go on this world youth day with them and I did. And here in Toronto I have met an old man, I have met an old man who has told me that God loves me. I met an old man who has told me that he loves me. She said, now I've met a lot of old men who've told me they loved me - for $50. But she said this old man means it. And he tells me that God loves me and that I am the apple of God's eye, and that God knows me by name. And that God has known me from all eternity and that I'm God's work of art. And that I'm made in his image and likeness. And that he sent his son to save me from the kind of life that I had condemned myself to. And that God loves me so much that he wants to enjoy my company for all eternity. And she said that's changed my life, knowing that God loves me. And I'll never be the same. And of course that man about whom she was speaking was John Paul II. So we can never underestimate the tremendous impact of knowing that Good News, that God loves us personally and passionately as Benedict XVI reminds us.

One of the sections of Deus Caritas Est that seemed to attract a lot attention was this simple statement in section 22 of the encyclical:

The Church cannot neglect the service of charity any more than she can neglect the Sacraments and the Word. (22)

You see what is happening here is that the Holy Father is reminding us that charity is on par with Word and Sacrament. Now when we seek to define the mission of the Church, we usually limit it to Word and Sacrament. And Benedict says we're dead wrong if we don't put charity on par with the other. Can I go on a little bit from him?

The Church's deepest nature is expressed in her three-fold responsibility: of proclaiming the word of God (kerygma-martyria), celebrating the sacraments (leitourgia), and exercising the ministry of charity (diakonia). These duties presuppose each other and are inseparable. For the Church, charity is not a kind of welfare activity which could equally well be left to others, but is a part of her nature, an indispensable expression of her very being.(25)

Very, very important to everybody, that in the Church, acts of love and charity are not just a nice idea, not just a pleasant hobby, not just something which a parish might say, "oh by the way, we ought to do something." It is at the core of the very heart of the Church. It gives the Church her very identity.

Benedict reminds us that the motivation for the Church's charity always has to be spiritual. Here's where it differs from what you might call altruism. It can never be co-opted by a political or ideological agenda. The formation of just structures or "the ordering of a just society and State," Benedict tells us, is not the precise work of the Church, but of politics. As you know, when the Holy See uses the word politics, they are referring to a very noble profession. When we say "politicians" in the United States, we might not reach that high. We have in mind the governor of Illinois. The Holy See has in mind St. Thomas More. So the purpose of politics is the mechanics of creating this more just social order. It's not the Church. The Church's task is to model and to use it's social teaching to help form consciences to do that. And to critique policies that fall far from the goal. Again, do you mind a quote from Benedict?

The Church cannot and must not take upon herself the political battle to bring about the most just society possible. She cannot and must not replace the State. Yet at the same time she cannot and must not remain on the sidelines in the fight for justice.[here's that both/and] She has to play her part through rational argument and she has to reawaken the spiritual energy without which justice, which always demands sacrifice, cannot prevail and prosper. A just society must be the achievement of politics, not of the Church. Yet the promotion of justice through efforts to bring about openness of mind and will to the demands of the common good is something which concerns the Church deeply.(28)

While we're on the both/and thing, another either/or proposition that Benedict XVI avoids, is the dichotomy which he calls false between relief and reform. You know the difference, don't you? This is very important in our social justice theory. As the old saying goes, relief means we would give a poor person a fish. Reform means we would teach him or her how to fish. So relief is to take care of one's immediate needs. Reform is to try to take care of and rectify the structures that have led to the want of that person's need. Both are essential, Benedict XVI tells us. And this is a bit of a summoning of the Church to return to that both/and. Because as you historians may know, maybe in the past the Church was too relief top heavy and in recent decades maybe we've become a little too reform top heavy. And Benedict reminds us that both are essential. I have seen this radiantly in the work of Catholic Relief Services. For example, in my trip to Ethiopia, we spent a day with the Missionaries of Charity in their major house in Addis Ababa. The Missionaries of Charity, the sisters of Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta by the way, have 18 houses throughout Ethiopia. Which the president of Ethiopia, who himself is not a Catholic, told us is the social security network of Ethiopia. In other words, it's where people go who have no where else to go. And Catholic Relief Services is intimately tied to all those 18 houses. Now at the house of the Missionaries of Charity in Addis Ababa, I saw the mechanism which feeds 6,000 people a day. Two nutritious meals. If the Missionaries of Charity one day had to leave or didn't have the food, that would mean 6,000 people would go hungry, would have no where else to go. That everybody is raw relief. That is satisfying the immediate needs of God's people. They'll be hungry again in four hours.

In India recently, we visited a group of sisters who had set up a hospice. Now I'm quick to say, they called it a hospice, but it's not a house for dying. On the contrary, it was a home for about 80 little girls. They're as happy and as healthy as could be. Big deal. Why? Because these girls live among what are called the tribal people, meaning they live out in the woods. And there's a school there, but the girls can't go. How are they gong to get from their village to the school? So the sisters, who said, well now we have a school but nobody's coming, they opened up a hospice. And the girls come to live there all week and go to school. And it is transforming Indian society, and get this, leading to persecution. Because the more powerful people in Indian society said to the sisters, why are you wasting your time educating these tribal girls. Who is going to wait on us in our homes? Who is going to work in our fields? They do not need education. If you educate them, they will learn and will have a sense of their dignity and we'll never keep them in the fields, we'll never keep them serving us in our homes. Which led them actually to arrest the sisters. And that institution by the way is supported by CRS.

That my brothers and sisters would be an act of reform. Do you get the difference? Relief and reform.

Now what Benedict XVI tells us is that both are essential. Both/and, not either/or. Perhaps the one who best expressed this was Dom Helder Camara. You've heard of him, the saintly Archbishop of Recife in Brazil. And he had the famous statement, "When I fed the poor, they called me a saint. When I began to ask why people are poor, they called me a communist." Both relief and reform are essential according to Deus Caritas Est.

Catholic social teaching reminds us that reform flows from the virtue of justice, and that justice is a requirement of all Catholic charity. According to the World Synod of Bishops of 1971:

Christian love of neighbor and justice cannot be separated. For love implies an absolute justice, namely a recognition of the dignity and rights of one's neighbor.

One of the most important admonitions that Deus Caritas Est has for us in the Church who do charitable work is that it is a spiritual act. As such, motivating us is the love of Jesus Christ and his people. Motivating us - here we go again - is a humble, grateful recognition that we are undeservedly, lavishly, personally and passionately loved by God, and that all he asks is that we receive it gratefully, return it to him and share it with his people. That of course is the spiritual dimension of our charity. It's not just altruism. It's not just good works. It's not just philanthropy, as great as those are. It is a spiritual act. Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta most powerfully taught us that. Remember, when Malcolm Muggeridge was working on Something Beautiful for God, the work that led to his own conversion, but when he was working with her he was not yet Christian, he was not yet Catholic, perhaps - I don't know his life that well - perhaps he was not even a believer…but he said of Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta, he said I don't know how you do this. You daily go out and I see you embrace and kiss and clean people who are covered with maggots, who have sores that are oozing with pus, who are laying in their own urine and feces, and I cannot understand your motive for doing that. And he was startled to hear her say, "Because when I look in their face, I see the face of Jesus." There is the spiritual dimension of our charity.

When I was an auxiliary bishop in St. Louis I was on a pastoral visit once I was eager to go to probably what was the most vivacious, effective apostolically zealous parish in the entire archdiocese. It was a teeny parish. They had a charismatic pastor. They were renowned for their work in social justice and charity. So I was there all weekend with them, as I try to do here in Milwaukee as well on a pastoral visitation. And in the end, when I was meeting with the pastor, who now by the way is the administrator of the Archdiocese of St. Louis as they await a new bishop, I said to him show me the real heart of the parish, show me what makes this all tick. And so he said. Okay, I'll show you. So we began to walk and we walked through a room where there must have been two dozen people making sandwiches and casseroles for the soup kitchens in the city of St. Louis. And I thought, oh, this will be it. And he kept walking. And then we walked into the human concerns meeting, where the human concerns committee of the parish was speaking about an act of legislation before the Missouri legislature that hey considered unjust and t hey wanted to mount a campaign against. And I thought oh this must be it, and he kept walking. We walked through the school, which was a huge and effective Catholic grade school. I thought oh he's going to show me this; this is the heart of it. He kept walking. And on and on and on, you get my point here, until we stopped at the chapel of perpetual Eucharistic adoration. And he said to me, this is the heart of the parish. I don't see any of our people who are in the soup kitchens, who are on the human concerns committee, who are active in catechesis, who involved in our school, who work in our dozens and dozens of ministries, who are not here praying periodically during the week. Once again it dawned on me that the charity and works of justice for which that parish was so renowned, was a spiritual act. It flowed from their prayer. It sprung from their faith. And that, of course, is what Deus Caritas Est show.

That animates the entire mission of Catholic Relief Services. For Catholic Relief Services, who we are and who we serve are even more important than what we do. As St. Thomas Aquinas would remind us, acts flow from being. We are committed Christians. We serve the poor, in whom we see the reflection and the face of Jesus Christ. That is more important, and that gives rise to what we do.

By the way, Catholic Relief Services had a strong alliance with Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta since her earliest days founding the Missionaries of Charity. And it remains one of our proudest focuses.

What are the implications for our pastoral ministry? When you begin to think of your own mission as parish priests, when you begin to plan for your own happy days as pastoral leaders and as priests in parishes, you need to know what you're about and who the people are you're serving. And it's always good to remind ourselves of that triple mandate from the Lord that has been with the Church from the beginning, which is called for again by Benedict XVI in Deus Caritas Est. namely that we proclaim that word, there's teaching; that we celebrate the sacraments, there's sanctifying; and that we have the ministry of charity, there's service. Those need to be incorporated into the life of the parish, into your own life, into the life of the dioceses that you will call home, as this teaching, serving and sanctifying is in the very mission of CRS. That means everybody - let's try to get practical here - that this call to charity that rings forth in Deus Caritas Est perhaps might be the medicine that we need in the Church today. Because we have been somewhat reduced to a quivering, crying, whining, introspective, navel-gazing Church. Particularly because of the clergy sexual abuse scandals of the last seven years. I was just with parishioners at St. Vincent Pallotti parish. And I was meeting with the parish council, the trustees, members of the various commissions, and one of the people said, Archbishop, help us to understand how we can bring about a Catholic revival. How can we as Catholics stand up and be tall again. How can we attract people to the faith once again that has taken such a beating? How can we restore the Church and win back our people? And I said to them, perhaps the only way we can do it is the way the Church has done it from the very beginning. And that is radiate love and joy. Love and joy are the only two ways we can call people forth. As you know, it was not perhaps the cogency of our moral and doctrinal teaching, as essential as that is, that won converts in the early Church, as much as people stood back and observed, "See how those Christians love one another." Once again, in my India experience with Catholic Relief Services I was amazed that in that teeming population of close to 1 billion people, only 18 million were Catholics. That means do the arithmetic here folks, 1.8 percent of the country is Catholic. And yet I was flabbergasted to see that the Church enjoyed renown. And the Church was held in high esteem by everybody. And so I began to ask why. And the answer came, well, it should be no surprise. The church is held in high esteem because of her teaching. Everybody wants their kids in a Catholic school. Because of her service and charity. When people don't know where else to go, they know they can go to the Church. Because of her sacraments, liturgy and tradition of spirituality, which resonates so well with that magnificent Indian culture that has been so open to the divine. And fourthly, because of the Church's prophetic message of believing that all of us are equal, created in the image and likeness of God, deserving dignity and respect. And the prognosis is that by the year 2050, there will be 50 million Catholics in India. So what is attracting people to the Church? Love - teaching, serving, sanctifying - and a sense of joy. And I would propose to you that's the answer in our parishes. The only way we're going to revive them, the only way we're going to restore the verve and vigor of our Church is through our charity - our love - and our joy. We've tried to do that here in our Archdiocese of Milwaukee. That's one of the goals of our Faith in the Future capital campaign.

But the people told me from the beginning, Catholics need a cause around which people can rally, and we need a reason to stand tall and express our confidence in the future of the Church. How? Through sacrificial love and generosity. There it is again - love.

One of the tremendous gifts that we as Catholics have, and the Holy Father points this out in Deus Caritas Est, is that we are catholic. Now I'm not just talking about Catholic with a big C, I'm speaking about catholic with a small c. That means we are not Congregationalists. I would propose to you that is one of the great temptations in the Church today. Our people are tempted to look upon themselves as Congregationalists, not as Catholics. And here's the difference. For a Congregationalist, the essence of the church is in our backyard, our local congregation. For a Catholic, the essence of the Church is always beyond us. It's always out there. It's always world wide. One of the reasons I so embrace Catholic Relief Services is because it is Catholicism in action. It has this amazing ability, a Catholic dimension, of reminding us of our world wide responsibilities, that we are call always to look beyond.

I love the story of Bernini, when he was designing the colonnades that go out from the greatest church in Christendom, St. Peter's Basilica. And they said, "What do these represent?" Some said, "If you look at it from the hill, it kind of looks like a key, so it must represent the key of Peter." He said, "Oh thanks, I hadn't thought of that. That must be what it is." No, but he actually said, "I intended it as the arms of Holy Mother Church reaching out to embrace the world and to bring them in." There's the catholic dimension of the faith and the Church that we love that is so beautifully exemplified in organizations like Catholic Relief Services.

The word that caught the attention of the world beginning about 30 years ago, instead of catholic, was the word used by John Paul II, solidarity. Solidarity. A word now used by our new president in his inaugural address, so much has it become a part of the vocabulary of the world today. Solidarity. That we're all in it together, folks. That we're all part of a bigger family. That the essence of human personhood is the law of the gift, which means we are at our best and are most consonant with the divine design when we give away what we have inside to others. Most exemplified in Jesus on the cross. Solidarity, as George Weigel in his biography of John Paul II noted, solidarity most exemplified itself in June of 1979 when John Paul II returned to his beloved Poland. …that trip is probably one of the six most significant events in 20th century history because it electrified the Polish nation. If you see the speeches of John Paul II, never once did he refer to communism. Never once did he criticize the government precisely - theoretically, yes. Never once did he speak of politics. But the result of that meeting is that Poland came together in solidarity, and the "I" was changed to a "we." And the people of Poland for the first time in that century's tortured history were able to stand up and say, 'I'm not alone. There are millions of others who believe and feel and dream like I do.' And from that sense of solidarity that he was able to engender, well, literally the rest is history. Because the mission of communist oppressors, as is the mission of fascist oppressors, is to reduce solidarity, to eliminate it, to atomize society, such that we feel alone. Our names are taken away and we are reduced to a number. And we've become part of a fractured, hyper-individualized society that makes any expression of a communal identity impossible. And John Paul II know shrewdly and boldly that as he brought the people of Poland together solidarity would be born and things would never ever, ever be the same. Solidarity, love and joy. Josef Stalin said the man who I most fear is the one who smiles.

Now you future parish priests have a particularly sacred responsibility always to remind our people of the catholic dimension of their faith, always to remind them of solidarity. One of the many things I rejoice in here in the Archdiocese of Milwaukee would be the number of parishes that have sister parishes. I just had dinner last night with a wonderful group of people from St. Robert's in Shorewood. I was asking for a major gift to the Faith in our Future campaign. And I was very moved by the pastor, Fr. Dennis Dirkx, who shared with them the case statement of their parish party drive. And a big chunk of their money is going to build a school in their sister parish in Uganda. That excited those people. There's the catholic dimension. There's the solidarity. There's the universality that has to be part of the preaching, the teaching, the example of the parish priest. And - commercial here- one of the agencies that most exemplifies that is Catholic Relief Services.

Let me close here. Parish priests need to develop a kind of radar for the poor. Did you ever notice, and Pope Benedict refers to this in Deus Caritas Est, how in the Gospel we often see Jesus walking down the road, surrounded by people, his disciples, hundreds of people grabbing at him, reaching. Remember Jesus' statement, "Who touched me?" Peter said, "Who touched you? Well, about 300 people!" But his radar was always for those on the side of the road. Could be the blind beggar. Could be Zacchaeus in the tree. Could be the woman with the hemorrhage. He was always aware of the people at the side of the road. And that of course has got to be the mission of the parish priest. That he would never forget that and that he would continually sensitize his people to those at the side of the road. The Church, my brothers and sisters, as Pope Benedict reminds us, is always on the side of the poor. This is threatened today in our country, because Catholics have become prosperous. We are immigrant people, our Catholic people came from poor roots. And the church in the United States has always been on the side of the poor. The people could immediately go to their parish for help: The welcome we give to the immigrant and the refugee. The orphans and the hospitals. The Catholic Charities. The assimilation done by our parishes. The neighborhood parishes became like the monasteries in medieval times, this center of helping people. We've always been on the side of the poor. And that's threatened today by prosperity. So we're tempted to forget them. And our goal, our vocation as priests is to remind them that we're always on the side of the poor. We're not talking about politics here. What we're talking about is the love that Benedict XVI tells us is at the heart of the Gospel.

I close with this story of St. Lawrence the deacon, who to this day is one of the most popular saints. In Rome there are more churches named after St. Lawrence than anyone else, except for Our Lord and Our Lady. As the early Church began to grow, it experienced periodic spasms of persecution. During one such period, Lawrence was summoned by the emperor, who said, "The Church is getting too powerful and too wealthy. I demand that within three days you bring me the Church's treasury, the Church's wealth, the Church's riches, or I will again unleash persecution." And three days later, the emperor was told, "Lawrence is in the courtyard with the treasury of the Church." And the emperor went out ready to clutch it, only to see the blind and the lame and the hungry and the beggars and the forgotten. Whereupon Lawrence told the emperor, "This indeed is the treasure of the Church."

I would suggest to you that that story is a good summary of Deus Caritas Est and the work of love and charity to which the Holy Father calls us.