How to become the “Church of the poor”? In a certain sense the question is redundant, as the Church always has been that. But Pope Francis’  emphasis on the preferential option for the poor is still a necessary reminder of how easy it is to drift into what seem like cultic or even sectarian preoccupations. Where is the merit in liturgical exactitude or legalistic hair-splitting, if there are starving beggars at the porch? But nor is romanticising the poor necessarily any more Christian. The point about poverty is to counter it. Poverty is always a warning that something has gone wrong, and a Church of the poor must be a Church which cannot tolerate injustice, any more than it can turn a blind eye to misfortune. Partly because of their own history, the Catholics of G