Article published on the L’Asino on October 4th 1924
Don Abbondio and Fra Cristoforo were two Catholics with two different tendencies. Don Abbondio was always with the strongest, with the supreme powerful against the weak oppressed. Don Abbondio always found some faults in who held his reasons against someone violent and ended up with a  broken head, always agreeing with the torturer. He was a member of the Centro Nazionale italiano (Italian national centre) and he was a subscriber of the Osservatore Romano and the Civiltà Cattolica. On the other hand, Fra Cristoforo always sided with the weak oppressed against the supreme powerful, with the beaten against the beat. He was a member of the Partito popolare (popular Party) and a subscriber of the Popolo di Roma. The former obeyed to the iniquity of Don Rodrigo and his flunkeys; the latter rebelled to the tyrant. One day he also faced him, as everybody knows, in his palace, trying to dissuade him from his infamous intentions. The Osservatore Romano strongly disapproved the relationship he had with Don Rodrigo. The cardinal hoped that the situation would vanish by itself, that the friar would gain back his reasoning; but seeing how things were going down the drain, he called him at Rome. The cardinal, letting him come close, told him: -Father, why do you oppose Don Rodrigo?- You, Illustrious Monsignore, will for sure have heard about the abuses that this sir and his flunkeys committed against that poor farmer. –I ask you- said the cardinal –if it is true that you are strongly against him along with the others in town.- What would the church be if this language of yours were the one of all thy brothers? Where would you be, if you came to the world without these doctrines? –But what is it that I have to do? –You ask me? And I must tell you, too? Obey, son: obey and pray. Always obey those in power.
Scalarini