Catechesis With Pope Benedict Xvi

Pope Benedict XVI: "On the basis of these simple findings that result from the Gospel, we can advance a pair of reflections. The first is that Jesus welcomed into the group of his close friends a man who, according to the concepts in vogue in Israel at that time, was considered a public sinner. Matthew, in fact, not only handled money deemed impure because of its provenance from people foreign to the people of God, but he also collaborated with a foreign and odiously greedy authority, whose tributes moreover could be determined arbitrarily. For these reasons, the Gospels more than once speak jointly of "tax collectors and sinners" (Mt 9, 10; Lk 15, 1), of "tax collectors and prostitutes" (Mt 21, 31). Furthermore, they see tax collectors as an example of meanness (cf Mt 5, 46: they love only those who love them), and mention one of them, Zacchaeus, as "a leader of tax collectors and a rich man" (Lk 19, 2), while popular opinion associated them with "extortioners, the unjust, adulterers" (Lk 18, 11). Based on t