I got on to the train late on Friday evening a few weeks ago, the day after Laudato Si’ had been released. Working in Catholic media as I do, I had already had the opportunity to read it in full (I love my job!).
When I stepped on to the train, I didn’t go up or down the stairs, but sat in the handful of seats which face each other in the centre part of the carriage.
At the next stop, two men got on to the train. One was fairly well dressed – he was wearing a suit and a shirt, with a nice scarf around his neck. The other man was not.
He was in paint-stained boots and grubby clothes, and his long beard, unkempt hair and dirty skin gave me the impression that he was one of our city’s many rough sleepers.
It didn’t appear that they knew each other, but they caught my attention at first because the well-dressed man was yelling at the shabbily-dressed man, and using an inordinate amount of profanity, even for that time of night!
Being on my own, I was not confident to stand up and intervene. But I stared at them intensely. I wanted the well-dressed man to know that I was taking everything in.
“F— the birds,” he was saying. “F— them! They’re nothing. They’re food and nothing else.”
The shabbily-dressed man looked over and said: “They’re not simply food. They are God’s creatures as well, and we should respect them.”
“Just yesterday,” he continued, “the Pope was saying that we need to care for all of creation and not just worry about ourselves.”
Now I wasn’t just pretending to listen, they definitely had my attention.
Here was an apparently-homeless man citing an encyclical which had been released not 24 hours before to a complete stranger!
As their conversation continued, I came to understand why the well-dressed man had been yelling. Continue reading
- Monica Doumit is the co-ordinator of Catholic Talk, a Sydney based group which offers a clear and charitable Catholic view on local and international news items. She has practised as a corporate lawyer in Sydney and the United Kingdom, and also holds a Masters of Bioethics.