A star chef launched a cafeteria to feed the poor – after remembering a prayer he sent up decades ago.
Robert Mendoza, who has cooked for three US presidents, was born in El Salvador amid war and poverty. “When you are hungry,” he recalled in an interview with CNN, “there is no language, just your stomach growling.” One day in his early teens, he prayed: “God, When I grow up, I do not want to feel hunger.”
Years later, Mendoza won $250,000 in the lottery. His reaction was: “This is not my money.” So he put it to use setting up a cafeteria for the poor in the Dominican Republic. It’s providential, he says: “God made me a chef because I suffered too much hunger in El Salvador.”
***
Pope Francis has criticised lyrics by Queen and the pop group Florence and the Machine in his message for Lent.
Speaking of the destructive power of sin, Francis said: “Unless we tend constantly towards Easter, towards the horizon of the Resurrection, the mentality expressed in the slogans ‘I want it all and I want it now!’ and ‘Too much is never enough’, gains the upper hand.”
Queen’s “I want it all” was on their 1989 album The Miracle, while Florence and the Machine’s “Too Much Is Never Enough” came out in 2016.
