Luke 16:13-15 "No servant can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money." The Pharisees, who loved money, heard all this and were sneering at Jesus. He said to them, "You are the ones who justify yourselves in the eyes of men, but God knows your hearts. What is highly valued among men is detestable in God's sight.

I tell you, I am really liking this new pope. What does it say when it is astonishing to hear a pontiff counsel exactly what Jesus taught all those millenia ago?

Pope Francis denounced what he called big business's idolatry of money over man as he traveled Sunday to one of Italy's poorest regions to offer hope to the unemployed and entrepreneurs struggling to hang on.

Francis left aside his prepared remarks and spoke off the cuff to thousands of people in Sardinia's capital, telling them he knew well what it was like to suffer from financial crisis. He recalled that his Italian parents, who immigrated to Argentina before he was born, spoke about it often at home.

"My young father went to Argentina full of illusions of making it in America," a somber Francis told the crowd at the start of a daylong visit to the island. "And he suffered the terrible crisis of the 1930s. They lost everything. There was no work."He said it's easy for a priest to come and tell the poor to have courage, but that he really meant it. Amid shouts of "Lavoro! Lavoro!" (Work! Work!), Francis called for a dignified work for all.

"Excuse me these are strong words, but I speak the truth," Francis said. "Where there is no work, there is no dignity."

While he was speaking directly to the high umemployment rate in Italy, would that his words resonate with the 136 self-identified Catholics in Congress.