Charity is easy in the Eternal City; so is speculating, fervor for pope

National Catholic Reporter, Oct 11, 1996 by Patricia Lefevere

I could only wonder if one of the U.S. pilgrims will be John Varoli of Oradell, N.J., with whom I spoke a few years ago in Moscow, where he was rescuing starving urchins, lice-infected orphans and child prostitutes from the city's railway stations. Varoli took his foundlings to his tiny apartment and made efforts to feed and rehabilitate them.

When I asked this Cornell graduate, who had begun a career in international business in Brussels, why he had chosen the young train station tramps of Moscow as his apostolate, he answered, "the example of Edmund Rice," of whom he'd heard so much as a student at Bergen Catholic High School in Paramus, N.J.

Rice was fond of saying "give to the poor in handfuls."

In this rich city--and scores like it around the globe--where immigrants color the thoroughfares, children beg alms and snatch purses and drifters approach your table on a taverna to beg, one is called to attention by Rice's words: "Were we to know the merit and value of only going from one street to another to serve a neighbor for the love of God, we should prize it more than gold or silver."