The Church does not require great exertions from you, and the service of God does not destroy you from over-fatigue, though it kills you with hunger.

There exists a monstrous inequality between the salaries of those down below who sit in the choir and sing and what you earn, who lend to worship all the strength of your arms.

You will not die of fatigue, it is true; many a workman in the towns would laugh at the lightness of your duties; but you languish from poverty.

I see in this cloister the same anaemic children that I saw in workmen's slums, I see what you eat and what you are paid.

The Church pays its servants as in the days of faith; she believes that we still live in the times when whole towns would throw themselves into the work with the hope of gaining heaven, and would help to raise cathedrals without any more positive recompense than the workman's stew and the blessing of the bishop; and all this while, you, beings of flesh who require nourishment, deceive your stomachs and those of your wives and children with potatoes and bread, while down below those wooden images are covered with pearls and gold in senseless profusion, and without its ever occurring to you to ask yourselves why the idols who have no wants should be so rich, while you are unable to satisfy your own and live in misery." The listeners looked at each other in astonishment, as though these words were an illuminating flash.