give me a place where I can stand

Speaking of the Vatican, what does it look like?










Wow -- one cannot say our Roman brethren don't know real estate.


----------------------------- I liked what James Carroll wrote in The New Yorker about the visit of Pope Francis to the U.S. a few weeks ago.


Carroll wrote that the Pope "declared that responsible and creative action is not only necessary but possible."


__________________
And, "His passionate engagement is changing a Church that still insists it cannot change.


Francis is too busy to take up that argument."
____________________________


That reminded me of a sign that used to be up in a front office at work, that said something like, "The person who's saying it cannot be done should not get in the way of the person who's accomplishing it"... "Francis is too busy to take up that argument."


Carroll adds, "He [the Pope] has seized the levers that are available to him, and to everyone's surprise (surely including his) those old levers are still geared to the engines of world improvement."





In a 1963 speech at the U.N. President John F. Kennedy said,





"I believe the problems of human destiny are not beyond the reach of human beings."  The test ban treaty might not end war, resolve every conflict, or bring freedom to every nation, he admitted, but it could be a lever, "and Archimedes,







in explaining the principles of the lever, was said to have declared to his friends, 'Give me a place where I can stand -- and I shall move the world.'  My fellow inhabitants of this planet ... let us see if we, in our own time, can move the world to a just and lasting peace."


__________________________


Levers.


______________________


The Pope
"...has seized the levers that are available to him, and...those old levers are still geared to the engines of world improvement."





-30-