The next three years he spent in the neighbourhood of Assisi in abject poverty and want, ministering to the lepers and the outcasts of society.
Hence in their view all who did not participate in the national worship and conform to the national usages were outcasts.
In one day he caused no fewer than 2600 of these outcasts and depredators in Munich and its suburbs alone to be arrested by military patrols, and transferred by them to an industrial establishment which he had prepared for their reception.
The thought of divine forgiveness, as set forth in the teaching of Jesus and manifested in His own attitude towards, and power over, the hearts of the outcasts among the people, is peculiarly prominent in this Gospel.
Outcasts alone, the offspring of irregular unions, could be ignorant of the blood which ran in their veins, of the unseen ancestors to be fed and tended in family and gentile rites.'
