Power play: Papal aide’s manhole act angers Italy’s Salvini
ROME — Italian Interior Minister Matteo Salvini has taken aim at a Vatican cardinal who climbed into a utility manhole to restore electricity to squatters in a state-owned building, pitting far-right Italian politics against Pope Francis’ humanitarian agenda.
Salvini was incensed by the take-charge action of Cardinal Konrad Krajewski, who is the pope’s official almsgiver.
A rising force in Europe’s far-right politics, Salvini is insisting that Krajewski pay 300,000 euros (about $340,000) in back electricity bills for the Rome palazzo, tweeting Monday that Italians who pay for their own power must be “fools.”
Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano rallied to the cardinal’s side, equating what Krajewski’s did on Saturday night for about 450 homeless people, among them nearly 100 children, to a “gesture of humanity.”