"I'm not attached to My paupers like an English old maid to lost cats, or to the poor bulls in the Spanish bull-ring. I love poverty with a deep, reasoned, lucid love -- as equal loves equal. I love her as a wife who is faithful and fruitful. If the poor man's right was derived only from strict necessity, your piddling selfishness would soon reduce him to a bare minimum, paid for by unending gratitude and servility. You've been holding forth against this woman today who has just bathed My feet with very expnsive nard, as though My poor people had no right to the best scent....

Poverty is the emptiness in your hearts and in your hands. It is only because your malice is known to Me that I have placed poverty so high, crowned her and taken her as My bride. If once I allowed you to think of her as an enemy, or even as a stranger, if I let you hope that one day you might drive her out of the world, that would be the death-sentence of the weak. For the weak will always be an insufferable burden on your shoulders, a dead weight which your proud civilizations will pass on to each other with rage and loathing. I have placed My mark upon their foreheads, and now you can only confront them with cringing fury; you may devour one lost sheep, but you will never again dare attack the flock. If My arm were to be lifted for only an instant, slavery -- My greatest enemy -- would revive of itself, under one name or another, since your law of life is debit and credit, and the weakling has nothing to give but his skin."

--Diary of a Country Priest, Georges Bernanos