Lent, the great Christian penitential season, began this week all over the world. In Europe, it will scarcely be noticeable: large parts of the Continent have been fasting, wearing sackcloth, and living amid ashes for several years. Even in one of Europe's best-fed countries, Cardinal Bernard Griffin last fortnight told his London archdiocese: "We are free to eat whatever we can obtain."
The Continent's poverty also served better than centuries of papal scolding to subdue the pre-Lenten orgies of Carnival. Fun-loving Italians, hungry or not, could not resist their first chance for many...
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