Occupy:  The Vatican

    Aharon, a sandle maker, the younger brother
    of Thomas, left his home urged by his  parents
    to search for his brother so as to return him
    to his family, and on his journey witnessed
    the Master cleansing the temple of  lenders
    and thus became a zealot of the cause and
    was anointed as the thirteenth disciple, given
    the power of proclaiming  conscience through
    the voice of the Master through the ages.
                                       

                                    “Go, sell what you possess, and give to the poor 
                                      and you will have treasure in heaven . . .”                                                      

                                                                                             —Matthew 19:21

Occupy the halls of government, empty of conscience, occupy all
properties dispossessed of compassion, occupy Wall Street, surely, the Gold
Coasts—Chicago and Hong Kong, Monte Carlo and Côte d’Azur—occupy
Madrid, Place des Vosges and the Bourse, if you must, occupy the parks
of the people in 108 countries, and the grand gardens of Powerscourt, Versaille, the
Boboli, but above all, occupy the Vatican.

Occupy that temple to the body of Christ to regenerate a soul that has been
abandoned, inhabit the basilica and the chapel void of the beatitudes, where the
dispossessed will find shelter.

In the square of St. Peter, melt the gold rings of cardinals, auction all archives and
art to feed the hungry, distribute crosiers to the crippled so they may walk upright,
clothe the naked with vestments purchased with pennies from the poor, created in
Christ’s name, tho’ the creation of suffering is sin, turn the pikes of the Swiss
Guard into ploughshares, and these things will lessen the afflicted and offer the
gesture of atonement on earth, imago mundi, while maintaining any article—the
stations, The Pietà—such as deemed necessary to their devotion. 

Carve the sins of priests & bishops into the obelisk of Heliopolis; may they lay
prostrate before it, in the square, to pray for forgiveness of the unforgivable, for
their obscenities, for the molestation of children, for requiring the faithful to
overpopulate themselves into a poverty that cannot know dignity, to pray to
Mary Blessèd Mother for the evictions of nuns made homeless in their final
years so as to settle legal disputes among the victims of  abuse, while hoarding
treasures beyond measure, refusing to release any object from any library, gallery or museum.

For those who occupy for justice’s sake, theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.