From police officers to politicians, people who are keen to occupy powerful positions should be treated with caution
Last modified on Sun 29 Jan 2023 10.17 GMTt some point near the end of the last millennium, I was shown around Rome by two Roman Catholic friends of mine. The experience was a blur of churches, statues, paintings, fountains and mouldering palazzos interspersed with large quantities of pizza so crispy that it has slightly spoiled my every subsequent encounter with the dish. As with heroin, sometimes it’s better not to know what you’re missing.
I reckoned it was virtue-signalling. It seemed clear to me that, if you’ve devoted your life to the church and risen through its hierarchy and then they make you pope, your kneejerk response is unlikely to be an uncomplicated “Oh no!” That would suggest unusually low self-esteem for a cardinal.
Of course, some people want to be police officers for entirely good reasons; some people want to for largely good reasons; some for partly good reasons and some for bad reasons. As a realist, I’d say we should be hoping for a force composed, as exclusively as possible, from the first three groups.
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