JESUS ​​CHRIST WAS POOR? THE PROBLEM OF A MISUNDERSTANDING «POOR CHURCH FOR THE POOR» AND THE GREAT PROBLEM OF ECCLESIASTICAL REAL ESTATE

Who out of crass ignorance, who for vulgar anti-clericalism, who for ideology or clerical pleasure speaks of a poor Jesus reduced to a penniless flower child, announces a false Christ who never existed and does not correspond to the historical chronicles narrated and transmitted by the Evangelists.

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Some Readers have pointed out that I write articles that are «interesting and clear, but too long". Someone clarified: "In the era of the social media most people don't read beyond the tenth line". Well I tell you that The Island of Patmos and a little’ a miracle. From October of 2014 to date, visitors have always increased without ever decreasing. In 2016 we had to buy one dedicated-server able to handle over twenty million visits a year. As ours explains webmaster success is not due to the number of visits but to the average time spent on the site, which is very high. Therefore, those who do not go beyond ten lines, I am not the audience to which the Fathers de The Island of Patmos they intend to contact.

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Now I will offer a long article for those who do not intend to explain and resolve complex and articulated themes on a historical level, ecclesial, pastoral, economic and financial with three “shot” lines up Twitter while walking down the street or in line at the checkout supermarket waiting to pay.

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In the episode of Report the 7 an interview with two Neapolitan presbyters was broadcast on Rai2 in November: Frank Cirino, Bursar of the Archdiocese of Naples e Vincenzo Doriano DeLuca director of the diocesan magazine January. The treasurer has demonstrated an extraordinary preparation on the ecclesial-pastoral and economic-financial level. We invite you to listen this interview, it is very interesting and clarifying for understanding how the difficult management of ecclesiastical assets really works.

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TI will address this theme on two different sides illustrating first, the current difficulties of managing the ecclesiastical patrimony, then the true and authentic meaning of "poverty" and of "poor Church" according to the Holy Gospels. The poverty of the Church is a concept dear to all hippies the Left radical chic with super-penthouses in Parioli and villas in Capalbio, pleasant resort of extra luxury in the lower Tuscan Maremma where, when he feared hosting a few migrants to be distributed to the various municipalities of Italy, the first to rise up were the Piddini with six-figure accounts who bivouac in that pleasant exclusive location, except to claim it right alone and the ports open to the disembarkation of anyone who arrives on our coasts, provided, however, that it does not arrive in front of the doors of their villas [cf.. WHO, WHO, WHO …].

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To understand we really need to take a step back, always addressing those who wish to know, then read, not to those who jump over on the tenth line. Let's start from 1850, year in which the Siccardi Laws were passed which sanctioned the separation between State and Church in the Kingdom of Sardinia, the number 1013 the 9 April and the number 1037 the 5 June, which suppressed the privileges previously granted to the Church, as already happened in other European countries in the period immediately following the French Revolution. Laws then extended to other Italian territories conquered by the Piedmontese between 1848 and the 1861. They followed the Rattazzi law n. 878 the 29 May 1855 and the subversive laws n. 3036 the 7 July 1866 e n. 3848 the 15 August 1867. After 20 September 1870 which marked the capture of Rome and the definitive unity of the Kingdom of Italy, were finally extended to the whole national territory.

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Needless to say: the person walking down the street or in line at the cash desk waiting to pay, send twett to pontificate in three lines on the most complex historical or historical-ecclesial questions, of the type "the Church is rich and owns half of Italian real estate" (!?), or "the Vatican has the largest deposits of gold in the world" (!?), he certainly cannot follow our discourse, because over time he would lose reading only one page, he will have already tweeted at least ten similar sage messages to spread his pearls of wisdom. And upon exiting the supermarket, always busy between a Tweet and the other, walking down the street you won't realize or wonder why certain historic buildings that were once abbeys, certose, monasteries and religious institutes, today they are barracks, schools, public offices. Simple to explain: those structures, between 1848 and the 1870 were confiscated from the Church, kicked out monks, nuns and priests, then transformed into barracks, hospitals, public offices. Many small churches owned by religious institutes or brotherhoods, once requisitioned they became warehouses, garage, workshops, pieces of private homes. And here an aside is in order, one of many among those you will never find in the history books, because the Italian Risorgimento is still today a myth built at the table by ideological propaganda. The confiscation work for the destination of those buildings for other use, throughout the Italian nineteenth century it constituted the greatest and most appalling destruction of the national artistic heritage. Soon said: transform a charterhouse or a 12th or 13th century monastery, enriched over time with works of art, sculptures, frescoes, fine worked marbles, to use it as a barracks, necessarily entails the irreparable destruction of a heritage of art. You have never found it written in history books for school use in which only the undisputed glories of the Italian Risorgimento are explained? Anyhow, even if it is not written in the books, the work of these immense havoc is still visible before our eyes, starting from Rome to follow with all the other big and small Italian cities, it would be enough to avert one's eyes from the social media and look around when walking the streets of Italian cities. Above all, as citizens, you should be aware, just out of pure civic sense, than most of the historic churches and religious institutes we see today, they are not owned by the Italian dioceses, but of the state. For their management there is also a special office managed by the Ministry of the Interior which is call FEC (Cult buildings fund). And here a parenthesis should be opened on another topic which, however, we cannot deal with here, to explain to certain secularists who thunder against the Otto per Mille to the Catholic Church that with this contribution, who really benefits, it is not the Church but the State. Try to think that the State should manage, conserve and protect certain large historic churches and basilicas that it owns, returned after confiscation to the Church on loan for use so that someone could provide for their protection and conservation. Stables today guarded by religious congregations or by the secular clergy of the various dioceses, who enlist the help of devoted Catholic faithful who provide free service as volunteers. Request: how much it would cost the State to have to conserve and guard certain great ones, precious and important historic buildings of high artistic value? How much salaried staff would it need, how many cleaners, how many guardians? So, the reckoning, on the much recriminated Otto per Mille, who is really making money?

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Just twenty years later, from 1890, the governments of the Kingdom of Italy, however fiercely anticlerical, they sent their officials holding the keys of many historic institutes and churches to beg the diocesan bishops, the monks and nuns, the men and women religious from whom they had been confiscated a few decades earlier, so that they could take them back on… free loan (!?). Indeed, the good liberal-Risorgimento-anticlerical State, he soon found himself having to deal with an enormous heritage of historical-artistic buildings that could not all be transformed into barracks, schools, hospitals, public offices, university locations … Many of these historic churches and former religious establishments were located in outlying areas, some abbeys, certose, monasteries and convents were in isolated areas and difficult to control. Once requisitioned and closed, first these were looted, then they began to pour into disrepair. Everywhere, in particular in Southern Italy, there had been great looting of works of art. The trade of thieves and art dealers with the United States of America was very dense, who in those years acquired most of the works still kept in their museums today. All this always as proof of the great unspoken historical glories of the Italian Risorgimento which must remain a myth, legend and ideology.

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The Italian nineteenth century it was also the century of the great saints of charity, educators and pedagogues, of which are emblem San Giovanni Bosco with the Congregation of the Salesians and the Daughters of Mary Help of Christians. Also in Piedmont, Maria Enrichetta Dominici gave life to the Sisters of Providence under the patronage of the Marquis of Barolo, which will then take the name of Sisters of Sant'Anna, engaged in the assistance and education of orphan girls. The Roman St. Vincent Pallotti founded the Catholic Apostolate, before which all Roman nobles opened their wallets, just to get him out of the way, so insistent was he when he sought funds for charitable works for the benefit of orphans and the elderly. St. Joseph Benedict Cottolengo, founder of the work of Divine Mercy, she cared for children and the elderly with severe physical disabilities. The foundation of these institutes and works also continued during the twentieth century with San Giovanni Calabria who founded the Poor Servants and Servants of Divine Providence, to whom we owe the foundation of the Sacred Heart Hospital of Verona, today a center of excellence at European level. And many other founding saints and foundresses.

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All these facilities dedicated to assisting orphans, children from poor families, sick elderly deprived of support and disabled, to follow along with the entire network of kindergartens and schools run by numerous religious congregations, above all they constituted a not indifferent service to the State, who mostly requisitioned only institutes of contemplative life after having declared them "parasitic". Obviously no one could explain to the legislator of the time - perhaps even more so to today's legislator - that certain apostolic works of active life were supported by the contemplative life of the monks and nuns who consumed their lives in prayer and penance in the cloisters and who constituted the fuel to run the engines of the great saints of charity.

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Between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, in an Italy in which the birth rate was much different and much higher, thanks to the donations of many wealthy benefactors huge institutes were built, some were real citadels. Between the twenties and thirties of the twentieth century, marine and mountain colonies were built capable of hosting up to 3.000 children. Pharaonic structures erected in years in which not so much construction, but the maintenance and conservation of certain buildings had completely different costs. There are also numerous institutions for abandoned children, the so-called orphanages. Equally numerous were those in which disabled children were welcomed and assisted. All this was happening in years when we weren't yet civilized. When in fact in the 1978 there was the "great social conquest" of the law on legalized abortion which gave birth to this "great and intangible civil right" [cf.. Ivano Liguori, WHO], mothers could go directly to hospitals to legally impose the death penalty on their children. And so, to gradually, the orphanages were permanently closed, partly due to the drop in birth rates and partly due to legalized abortion. While children with Down syndrome or other forms of disability are increasingly rare to see, because they can be killed before being born, in this country of ours that repudiates war and the death penalty to the sound of rainbows, except, however, making war on life and inflicting the death penalty on their children, to unwanted ones and those deemed not physically perfect.

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Thanks to the impetus given by the Council of Trent (1545-1563) the Church had already experienced a similar happy season between the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries with the birth of numerous institutes of so-called apostolic life. The birth of all those male and female religious congregations dates back to that period ― which then became numerous in the following three centuries ―, engaged in education, in childcare, in the care of the elderly, of the sick and disabled. New forms of religious life ranging from the Order of the Society of Jesus of Saint Ignatius of Loyola to the Hospitaller Order of the Fatebenefratelli of Saint John of God, from the Congregation of the Company of the Oratory of San Filippo Neri to the hospital ladies of San Vicenzo de' Paoli, the Daughters of Charity.

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To the decline in births joins that of vocations to the priestly and religious life. Many congregations of nuns, thriving until half a century ago, today they are increasingly reduced in number and made up of religious of an ever older age. The nuns are now disappearing from many medium and small Italian dioceses, with significant reductions in numbers even in the large ones and the consequent progressive closure of kindergartens, schools and institutes. Soon said: how to use certain prestigious historic buildings in city centres, or in singular or strategic places, for example facing the sea or in mountain tourist areas, or in hilly and countryside areas which have become particularly exclusive nowadays? Definitely selling them, or leasing them to hotel companies. To monetize or somehow make these structures profitable, no longer usable for the purposes for which they were built, it means obtaining the money necessary to support other kinds of charitable or welfare works of completely different dimensions, necessary and appropriate to the needs of contemporary society, which certainly is no longer that of the 1920s or 1930s.

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It takes a lot to understand this, instead of shouting at the "shameful real estate speculation of the Church", or instead of launching a feature in the weekly Espresso the totally false news about the Church, according to certain pseudo-investigative journalists would not pay taxes on real estate? Fake. The Church has always paid taxes on real estate from which only buildings of worship and those of welfare and charitable institutions are exempt [cf.. see in Future, WHO]. Or maybe they ignore, the signatories of these periodical published inquiries only one his Espresso, that even the Arcigay circles do not pay taxes because they are recognized as associations of public social utility as they are responsible for spreading the gender and instances of lobby LGBT? If certain congregations of nuns hadn't transformed some of their institutions that are no longer usable into more or less luxurious hotels, where would they get the money from to support other kinds of charitable and welfare activities in Italy or in various poor countries around the world? To the editors of Espresso, who over the years have bombarded us with articles bordering on anti-clerical ferocity, in addition to the gratuitous lie, understand this, it's just that hard?

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The topic covered in the episode of Report, made excellent by our Neapolitan brothers Franco Cirino and Vincenzo Doriano De Luca, as well as a wonderful Cardinal Crescenzio Sepe who, pressed insistently by a prurient journalist, sent him to fuck off [cf.. WHO] ― and he did very well to do it ― , it was partly about the number of historic churches in the historic center of Naples, about a thousand, of which only the 15% owned by the Archdiocese of Naples, partly on the case of the Apostolic Citadel founded after the war by the presbyter Gaetano Cascella with the donations of various benefactors and bequeathed to the Archdiocese of Naples in 1979. A huge charitable structure erected in Pozzuoli facing the gulf and changed into hotel facility. Soon said: enough to make the usual suspects scream together with the chorus of totally uninformed people against the dirty speculative Church: «The Church must be poor because Jesus was poor!».

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And now we move on to the second part: we are sure that "Jesus was poor", how those who do not set foot in church even for Easter and Christmas thunder and who when out of social duty have to participate in some wedding or funeral, during the liturgies they do not know what to answer, nor when to sit or stand up? And to the words "Our Father who art in Heaven...", total silent scene of almost all of certain assemblies convened out of duty towards the dear departed and his family, while the priest celebrant answers himself, or if an altar server or sacristan is present, at that point theirs will be the only voices to recite with him «… hallowed be your name, Come your kingdom …". but yet, it is precisely these people who cannot distinguish the book of the Holy Gospels from a manual of recipes for the kitchen, to raise the finger ― obviously above all on social media - to thunder and remind in a threatening tone: «Jesus was poor!».

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Sorry to disabuse these thirsting for poverty on the skin of others and of the Church in particular, except to seek and demand for oneself all the most expensive and even useless luxuries. Jesus was not poor at all. Both the Divine Master and his Apostles had enough to eat and live, despite having left work and homes. Simone known as Pietro was what today we could define as a wealthy fishing entrepreneur. As were James and John sons of Zebedee, certainly much more wealthy than the same Simon known as Peter, it would be enough to leave the club of the ignorant gods social media and read the chronicles of the Holy Gospels:

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«Passing along the sea of ​​Galilee he saw Simon and Andrew, brother of Simone, as they cast their nets into the sea; they were in fact fishermen. Jesus said to them,: "Follow me, I will make you fishers of men ". And immediately, leave the nets, they followed. Going a little further, he also saw Giacomo di Zebedèo and Giovanni his brother on the boat while they were rearranging the nets. He called them. And they, left their father Zebedee in the boat with the boys, they followed him" [MC 1, 16-20].

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I understand that today we are illiteracy is functional that digital, to the point of not even understanding what is imprinted in the Holy Scriptures. So let us try to understand this passage. First of all, the characters in this story about the calling of the Apostles, they owned not only “a boat”, but "of the boats", which at the time was no small thing, especially in that area considered one of the poorest provinces of the Roman Empire. Just like today it is completely different to be a lorry driver who owns a lorry for large transports whose cost can reach up to one million euros, and be a truck driver who drives a bulk truck owned by others as a salaried employee. The same thing still applies in fishing today, to both fishermen and fishing vessels, which are not always owned by those who are dedicated to fishing. The apostles were entrepreneurs who owned their own boats.

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The Holy Gospel referred to here, he specifies in the story that the father of Giacomo and Giovanni also employed hired workers: «And they, left their father Zebedee in the boat with the boys, they followed him" [MC 1, 16-20].

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Young John and his brother James they therefore came from a family of wealthy entrepreneurs, so much so that the mother, in a fit of naivety born of his lack of understanding of the mission of the Word of God, he asked Christ the Lord: "Tell these sons of mine to sit one at your right and one at your left in your kingdom" [Mt 20, 21]. We wonder who, if not the mother of two children belonging to what today we would call the mercantile bourgeoisie, he would have dared to make such a request to a Master of such prestige? Only a woman belonging to a specific social class who wanted a due place of respect for her offspring could do it.

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The Twelve Apostles they received help from benefactors and when guests arrived in the houses, provision was made by offering them the best that could be offered, they had devoted women to attend to their care and needs.

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Blessed Patriarch Joseph he was not a salaried worker but an entrepreneur who carried out a noble trade, that of cabinetmaker; respectable and very lucrative profession. Therefore, anyone who says "Saint Joseph the worker", or anyone who claims that "St. Joseph was a worker", mystifies the figure of the blessed husband of the Virgin Mary, because Joseph was not a worker as we understand him today, because it was certainly he who employed hired workers at his company.

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The Blessed Virgin Mary he came from an even more affluent family than Joseph's, it is always evident from the Holy Gospels, for example in the story of his visit to his cousin Elizabeth, mother of John the Baptist and wife of Zechariah, who was a member of the ancient priestly caste and a very cultured and wealthy person. Not only was Zacharias a priest, because as such it belonged to a very high level: he was a member of Abiah's class, which represented the VIII of the XXIV classes into which the priests serving in the Temple of Jerusalem were divided.

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All'era the culture was closely linked to economic well-being. Also in this case the Holy Gospels detail what was the cultural level of Zacharias by narrating how, not having at that moment the use of the word, removed from it by the Archangel Gabriel for not having believed the announcement that his wife would give birth to a son at an advanced age [cf.. LC 1, 5-25], he asked for a tablet to confirm his assent to the name Elizabeth intended to give to the unborn child, writing: "John is his name". [LC 1, 63]. In front of these stories, historians and anthropologists, but above all the theologians, they should explain how many people in ancient Judea at the time could read and even write. Not for nothing, when young Jewish males celebrated coming of age through the mtzva bar and they had to read and publicly comment on a passage from the Torah, as Jesus did at the age of twelve during the episode narrated by the Holy Gospels as his dispute with the Doctors of the Temple [cf.. LC 2, 41-50], most of it was pain, because the majority of Jewish teenagers could not read or write. So they memorized a verse and then, with the Sefer Torah open [the scroll of the Holy Law], they recited it. A bit like what happens today to the majority of more or less observant Jews, many of whom do not know Hebrew, several manage to read it, but they don't understand its meaning. And so the rabbi proceeds to write a verse transliterated from the Hebrew, puts it on Sefer Torah and the teenager reads it, sometimes without even knowing what it means.

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But here is the prompt reply of those who want a Jesus who is poor and strictly speaking the son of poor people at all costs: "Jesus was born in a poor stable". In this case too, however, things are different, in fact narrates the Blessed Evangelist Luke:

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«[…] at the time when a decree of Caesar Augustus ordered the census of all the land. This first census was made when Quirinius was governor of Syria. Everyone went to be enrolled, each in their own city. Joseph also, from Galilee, from the city of Nazareth, went up to Judea to the city of David called Bethlehem: in fact, he belonged to the house and family of David. He had to be registered together with Maria, his bride, that she was pregnant" [LC 2, 1-20].

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historical reality is that the power then in force had commanded a census for administrative reasons, thus forcing Joseph and Mary, then close to childbirth, to go to the city of David, Bethlehem. And here it is interesting to note that Bethlehem, in Hebrew, means "House of Bread". And right in that city, certainly not by chance, he was born who will later become the Living Bread descended from heaven [cf.. GV 6, 35-59], which is not "like what your fathers ate and died" because "whoever eats this bread will live forever" [GV. 6, 58].

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Forgetting all the tender readings with which popular piety has colored the text of Luke's Gospel, it narrates that the birth of Jesus takes place in a space that could be found in the houses of the time, those dug inside, presumably a room carved into the rock. Like the kind of houses that are still visible today in certain archaeological sites, those located in Sicily at the Necropolis of Pantalica in the Syracuse area [cf.. WHO], or in Basilicata at the so-called Sassi of Matera [cf.. WHO], or in the lower Tuscan Maremma in the city of Pitigliano dug into the tuff on the border between Tuscany and Lazio [cf.. WHO].

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In the Gospels there is no reference to the ox, the donkey and the presence of various animals around the Blessed Virgin Mary. Above all, this birth in an unexpected place, it didn't happen because Giuseppe was a penniless underclass, but because - as the Gospels narrate - both for the census, and for the large influx of pilgrims to Jerusalem, there was just not a single hole free.

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I use an example that always made me smile: the mother of my pupil and collaborator, today president of our Editions, Jorge Facio Lynx, she was about to give birth while she was inside a taxi. The taxi driver promptly diverted the ride to the hospital. But no one would ever argue, in case this other Maria ― Maria Ines, Jorge's mom ―, had given birth in a taxi, that the poor thing was so poor and penniless that she could not even afford to give birth to her child in an obstetrics-gynecology clinic.

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Jesus Christ was poor the same way he was born with very white skin, blond hair and blue eyes, in a city in Sweden - as we obviously read in the Holy Gospels - called Bethlehem, a few tens of kilometers from the capital of Stockholm. Among the various episodes that give the correct and real perception of how Blessed Joseph and the Virgin Mary were not poor penniless underclassmen, the story of the massacre of the innocents is certainly exhaustive. The fearsome Herod, having learned that astronomer magicians had traveled to Judea where a king was to be born, after trying to mislead them, he subsequently ordered to kill all newborn boys aged two and under. Blessed Joseph, warned in a dream by an Angel, takes the child and the mother and flees to Egypt, where the family remained until the death of Herod [cf.. Mt 2, 1-16]. Regarding this story it must be specified that in the wake of the Protestant Rudolph Bultmann, master of the demythologization of the Holy Gospels - to which many of our theologians and exegetes impudently refer, transmitting theories and teachings directly into our current ecclesiastical universities ―, many scholars question the historicity of the Flight into Egypt. Some of our biblical scholars intervened to give them a hand, arguing that the flight into Egypt of the story of the Blessed Evangelist Matthew would have been constructed to give a theological foundation to this Gospel directed mainly to the Jews, to whom it was thus exposed that Jesus Christ was the new Moses and that through him the prophecy of the Prophet Hosea was therefore fulfilled: "From Egypt I called my son" [Os 11,1]. According to others, the story of the Blessed Evangelist Matthew would be nothing more than a plagiarism of the Aggadah Hebrew that narrates how the Patriarch Moses was saved from death, after the pharaoh had decreed the suppression of children. In truth, the similarities between the Patriarch Moses and Christ God, they do not represent at all a solid element to deny the historicity of what is narrated by the Blessed Evangelist Matthew.

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After this dutiful digression let's get back to the problem, which is as follows: how two poor souls could afford to move to Egypt indefinitely? The lovers of today Jesus' poverty, have they ever wondered how much it cost, at the time, stay in Egypt? there, making both a parallel and a socio-financial conversion, we can argue that at the time, stay in Egypt, it cost what it would cost to stay in Dubai today, well-known destination of the greatest starving deaths of this world.

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Many times Jesus was honored with precious gifts, like the expensive nard oil with which Mary anointed his feet in Bethany [cf.. MC 14, 3-9]. Among the spectators present at the event was Judas Iscariot, who harshly criticized that gesture of loving devotion, lamenting such a waste. That oil was in fact very precious and expensive, it was worth three hundred denarii, as the Gospel account itself details. It's here, to explain what such an amount amounted to in Judea at the time, suffice it to say that a denarius was the daily wages of a Roman soldier and that oil, more expensive than gold, it corresponded to almost a year's pay. Before the episode of Judas who affirms that that money could have been given to the poor, John the Evangelist tells us that the Iscariot had no concern for the poor, but that he was a thief. In fact, the community of apostles had a chest from which he stole money [cf.. GV 12, 1-8]. A harsh judgement, the one enclosed in this story with which John condemns Judas, it does not condemn concern for the poor, but that hypocrisy that yesterday as today makes use of the poor when necessary and before which the Lord responds to Judas dispelling all doubts for the present and for the future: «You will always have the poor among you, but you won't always have me" [GV. 12, 1-11].

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Jesus also dressed elegantly, today we would say haute couture. In fact, he was wearing a precious tunic, fully woven and seamless, so much so that under the cross the soldiers didn't tear it to pieces as they used to do with the rags of the poor people, with which they then cleaned their spears and swords and polished their armor, but they played it with dice. The Synoptic Gospels limit themselves to narrating that the soldiers cast lots for his garment [cf.. Mt 27,35; MC 15,24; LC 23,34], while the Blessed Evangelist John hesitates to explain the value and value of that item of clothing: “Now that tunic was seamless, woven in one piece from top to bottom. So they said to each other: “Let's not tear it up, but we cast lots for whose turn it is"» [GV 19, 23-24]. All because a piece of such quality and value, it certainly couldn't be ruined.

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Among the twelve apostles — as we said earlier — there was also a cashier, a kind of forerunner of the president of APSA (Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See). However, this primitive administrator was no gentleman, his name was Judas Iscariot and he was a subject to be wary of, not so much when he spoke of the poor, pretending they cared so much; you had to beware of him especially when he gave kisses [cf.. Mt 26,47-56; MC 14,43-52; LC 22,47-53].

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The body of the dead Lord was wrapped in precious linen and placed in a fine new tomb provided by a rich man who had become a follower of Christ: Joseph of Arimathea [cf.. Mt. 27, 57-60]. So Jesus, to make the idea, he was not buried in a mass grave or in a modest niche at the expense of the Jerusalem municipality, but in what today would be in all respects the elegant sepulchral chapel of a very high-ranking family.

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A separate explanation deserves the same penalty as crucifixion and the methods adopted. Indeed, it happened frequently, not to mention practice, that the executioners, to alleviate the suffering of the condemned and to hasten his death, their legs and arms should be broken to hasten their death which in this way occurred by suffocation. Once the corpses were placed on the crosses, the bodies followed this fate: or they were caught and thrown into a large mass grave, or they were hacked to pieces with axes.

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Come May, the Holy Body of Christ the Lord this fate did not follow, or rather this practice, after his crucifixion on Golgotha? The same name as that gloomy hill, it encompasses both its history and its meaning. A word of Aramaic origin, the place is called in Greek ολγοϑᾶ and in Latin Golgotha, literally means "place of the skull", or the "skull", due to the presence of ossified skulls and bones scattered on the ground. The corpses were in fact thrown, whole or in pieces, in pits that are not always deep, with the consequence that the various animals present in the area often unearthed and then scattered the remains of human bodies around. But this fate, which was the usual practice, instead it was not the turn of Christ the Lord, whose body was taken down from the cross, harvest, washed, anointed with precious oils and essences, finally wrapped in an equally precious shroud. Evidently Jesus of Nazareth, however condemned to that horrendous punishment, he wasn't exactly one of several condemned ordinaries, therefore his body and the care of the same followed a completely different fate. And these different fates denote that he wasn't exactly a poor man, nor an ordinary convict surrounded by just as many poor people, like the numerous convicts for whom the same family members did not even dare to go and ask for the bodies for a proper burial, also because they should have given a generous tip to the Roman soldiers. Some poor relatives of the crucified dead attempted to steal their bodies at night, with the risk of ending up subjected to harsh penalties if discovered. That said, I don't want to make hypotheses that could even cause scandal in some. But, posed these premises, I have a simple doubtful question: it is none other than Joseph of Arimathea, indicated by the Holy Gospels themselves as «rich» [cf.. Mt 27, 57-61] going in broad daylight to request the Body of Our Lord Jesus Christ, from the Roman soldiers he didn't exactly show up empty-handed to take the body and offering them many thanks for their sensitivity and understanding?

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A few days later, before the overturned stone of the sepulcher of the Risen Christ, the Capos del Popolo invited the Roman soldiers guarding the tomb to lie. To induce them to do so they gave them a good sum of money [cf.. Mt 28, 12-14]. This theme to which I have dedicated a video lesson to which I refer [see video WHO]. Come May, the Heads of the People, they did not simply tell the Romans: “Dear Soldiers, be kind and do us this favour, say that…”? They did none of this for the simple fact that in ancient Judea where everything was sold, was bought and traded, the Romans who had perfectly settled in and integrated into the culture and ways of doing of the place, for free they did nothing, not even killing quickly, because even a "merciful" spear to relieve the suffering of a condemned man had a price to pay.

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The Holy Gospel of the Nativity and that of the Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ they do not at all narrate the birth of a poor man nor the death and burial of an equally poor man. And all of us, be faithful devotees, both people who are also non-faithful and non-believers, on the basis of what is called intellectual honesty we must stick to the historical accounts of the Holy Gospels, which have nothing to do with the more or less daring ideological exegeses.

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If we don't get into this style of thinking we cannot understand certain passages of the Holy Gospels, but we can only twist them, consequently dirty and distort them. When in fact in the Sermon on the Mount, Christ the Lord announces the Beatitudes [cf.. Mt 5, 1-16], his reference to the poor is not a dry and lapidary "Blessed are the poor", as Cardinal Claudio Hummes murmured during the last conclave, or as for nine years now we have unfortunately heard enunciated from the increasingly faith-poor pulpits of our churches, with homiletic rants obsessively focused on immigrants and refugees. The Word of God has never uttered this lapidary sentence, but he enunciated a much more articulated expression: "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven". He makes no reference to material poverty, much less indicating it as a virtue, rather than poverty, the misery, they are not cardinal virtues, they are misfortunes to get out of and help others get out of. We are invited to be poor "in spirit", that is, to enter into a precise inner disposition. In fact, being inwardly poor means first and foremost being aware of our limitations and our miseries as men born with the corruption of original sin. Being poor in spirit means recognizing our free and vital need to depend on the grace of God the Father. And the model par excellence of that poverty synonymous with humility and unconditional giving of love is Christ God who, as the Blessed Apostle Paul instructs us, despite being rich he became poor for us:

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«Cristo, while it is of divine nature, He did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, but he emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in human likeness. He appeared in human form, humbled himself by becoming obedient unto death and death on a cross" [Fil 2, 6-11].

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In the Holy Gospels the Lord does not tell us “You must be poor”, quite the opposite: he exhorts us by saying clearly «Be careful and keep away from all greed because, even if one is in abundance, his life does not depend on what he possesses" [cf.. LC 12, 13-21]. The intimate meaning of the Lord's words is: don't worry about anything, because it's worth worrying about, but it is good to worry about that all understood as cosmic Christocentrism, for being present projected towards an eternal future becoming, certainly not for nothing.

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Material goods are necessary and they can be very useful for transforming them into a collective good in various ways. Invest in studies, for instance, or in certain studies in a particular way, it is very costly, but thanks to the use of large sums of money some talented men became surgeons who then invented new operating techniques, others of the scientists who have discovered new molecules or created new vaccines. And all this was possible through that instrument called money, through which - some say - the world moves. Let's also assume that money moves the world, the important thing is that its movement does not make the man a slave trapped and unable to see beyond matter, something unacceptable for us Christians who in the profession of faith proclaim our Trinitarian belief in eternity: "Et expecto resurrectionem mortuorum, et vitam venturi saeculi".

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In the pages of the Holy Gospels, more than an invitation to a surreal poverty, or worse to an ideological poverty, the Lord invites us to make a healthy and generous use of riches, using them for the better development of ourselves and for the good of others, for example through those money flow mechanisms that create jobs and collective welfare. All this with all due respect to the great sharks of the worst wild liberal capitalism, who affirm that «the Church must be poor», while the poor non-EU African needs a free Cuba on the edge of their swimming pool in memory of Fidel Castro, in the sweet memory of Ernesto Guevara said Che, also known as The pig, i.e. the Pig, it was notoriously dirty both inside and out. If not, to those animated by selfishness who think only of filling their barns and then say to themselves: "Relax, it eats, drink and have fun and give yourself joy» [LC 12, 19]. The Lord remembers: "Careful, you who accumulate treasures only for yourself and do not worry about getting rich in the presence of God" [LC 12, 21].

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Wealth and well-being are not bad, quite the opposite, they can be sources of great good and as such serve to create wealth and superior well-being. The material means, starting with money, they have always been useful tools, indeed indispensable for the very proclamation of the Word of God and for evangelization. The Twelve themselves, who left family, home and work to devote himself to the apostolate, they had means of support. Their apostolic mission was supported by faithful benefactors and very wealthy widows. Let us therefore ensure that wealth can truly produce true wealth, for ourselves and for the good of others, so that everything is not only "vanity of vanities", as Qohelet admonishes by opening his speech with an invective against vanity [cf.. q 1,3].

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We should not wish or pray to create a "poor Church for the poor" [cf.. WHO]. The Church belongs to everyone, of the poor and the rich and all are called to salvation. Also because it is not written in any page of the Holy Gospels that poor equals good and that rich equals bad. There are poor people endowed with wickedness and appalling wickedness, as there are rich people who live with great respect for their neighbor, especially for the less well-off. And often only after the death of several of them did it become known how much charity they did and how many families they helped in total hiding. Just as there are poor people capable of depriving themselves of what is necessary to give glory to God, think of the evangelical account of the poor widow who throws the only two coins she possessed into the treasury of the temple [cf.. Mt 12, 41-44]. This is why I have always prayed and will continue to pray, not for an ideological «poor Church for the poor», but for a Church of men and women rich in faith, leaving the supreme to others ideology of the poor, which has never constituted a truth, much less a dogma of the holy Catholic faith. Assuming, however, that the first not to have been born of two poor people, not to have lived poorly, not to have eaten poorly, not to have dressed like a poor man, finally not even being buried as a pauper, it was really Our Lord Jesus Christ. And whoever tells you the opposite speaks to you of a completely different Christ from the one described in the Holy Gospels, therefore he announces to you a false historical Christ, a Christ who never existed and could not even exist. Therefore, who out of ignorance due to the total lack of knowledge of the Holy Gospels, (c)hi out of crass ignorance, who for vulgar anti-clericalism, who for ideology or clerical pleasure speaks of a poor Jesus reduced to a penniless flower child, announces a false Christ who never existed and does not correspond to the historical chronicles narrated and transmitted by the Evangelists.

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Christ is away, Truth and the Life [See. GV 14, 6], it is in its absoluteness and totality. Christ cannot be reduced to a pretext to legitimize our way and our questionable truths, finally leading the flock entrusted to us to shepherd by the Divine Shepherd towards a different path from the one given and offered by the Supreme Giver of life. For in that case the outcry will hang over us:

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"Woe to the shepherds who destroy and scatter the flock of my pasture". Therefore says the Lord, God of Israel, against the shepherds who are to shepherd my people: "You have scattered my flock, and you are driven them away and have not you worried; behold, I will deal with you and with the wickedness of your doings. Oracle of the Lord. I myself will gather the rest of my sheep from all the regions where I let them drive and bring them back to their pastures; they shall be fruitful and multiply. I will appoint shepherds over them who will graze them, so they shall fear no more, nor be dismayed; of them did not even miss a » [Gives 23, 1-4].

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And upon us that the sheep we have scattered them, because they are committed to imposing the ideologies of our "I" rather than the truths of God, condemnation will hang over the "slacker servant"., then we will be “thrown out into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth" [Mt 25, 30].

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Both to evangelize and to help the poor the Church needs the rich, many of whom have often been generous to the same extent that they have traveled far and wide through all the worst deadly sins. Without the money of the rich the Church could never have helped the poor. This is why the Church has accumulated goods, trying over time to increase them and put them to good use by making them pay. With all due respect to what we could define as the so-called "property benefactors" who thunder: "The Church must sell its goods and give them to the poor". That would be a nice idea. But, traveling one day to southeastern Sicily and talking to a wise farmer who raised cows - and who incidentally earned in a week what a high-ranking bank official earned in a month -, I understood from his sharp words that doing such a thing would be quite harmful, especially for the poor. In fact, if we take a cow and slaughter it - said the wise farmer -, giving roasted meat to the poor to eat for a week, when then the poor come to ask for milk, we will have to answer that there is no milk because they ate the cow. But, butchering it and offering it as food, we would have made a gesture of extraordinary "generosity" and "absolute donation". One of those gestures that people like so much hippies of the lefts radical chic. So we could send the poor to knock on the doors of their super penthouses in Parioli, or those of their villas in Capalbio, where you can even find them if you want 24.000 euros inside the dog's kennel, as happened to Senator Monica Cirinnà. Promptly defended by La Repubblica-L'Espresso Publishing Group [cf.. WHO] which complete with a filing decree from the competent court of Grosseto explains how much the interested party was a stranger. The same weekly Espresso who over the years has treated the Catholic Church in several reports as something between a mafia and a criminal association [cf.. WHO, WHO, WHO, etc…]. And when their investigations turned out to be bogus and the data false or distorted, no one has ever explained how unrelated we were to certain allegations, because we are not members of the left radical chic and why aren't we called Monica Cirinnà. That's why the doghouses of the Church for Espresso they always stink a priori, even when they smell of lavender and orange blossom and don't contain money of mysterious origin left in the dog's custody.

the Island of Patmos, 15 November

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