Last Friday night, at a hotel ballroom on Boston Harbor, some 400 guests gathered to raise funds for Catholic Charities.

The event had attracted a bit of notoriety: Mayor Menino was the honored guest, and when word of the award was made known last month, a small band of narrow-minded Catholics, putatively Christian people, demanded that the award be rescinded from the mayor. Somehow, in their mean-spirited world view, the mayor wasn't sufficiently a Catholic, and did not merit an award from a church-affiliated agency.

Never mind that the agency serves all people, and does wonderful charitable work. This crowd was out for vengeance, and six or eight of them threw up a picket line outside the hotel as guests arrived. Their intention was to discourage people from supporting Catholic Charities, and thus to harm the needy people who benefit from the agency's work.

The good news is their mean little strategy failed. Proceeds from the event doubled last year's and more than $200,000 was raised.

Especially poignant was Menino's formal speech that night, and in case you missed it, here's part of it:

"… in addition to being a public official, I am a Catholic. And I love my Church as much as I love my city. Tonight, I have the special opportunity to recognize that doing the mayor's work sometimes means doing the work of mercy. Mercy, too, can be a city function. In all humility, I want to tell you I'm never far from thinking of what the nuns taught me when they made me memorize the seven Corporal Works of Mercy. Do you remember them?

"To feed the hungry; To give drink to the thirsty; To clothe the naked; To provide shelter for the unsheltered; To visit the sick; To ransom the captive; And to bury the dead.

"Of course you remember the Corporal Works of Mercy. What else defines the great organization of Catholic Charities, if not that?

"I don't wear my piety on my sleeve. In fact, I don't often talk about my faith. I am not one of those politicians who goes around bringing God into public life, as if God needs to be mentioned in speeches or be put up on courtroom walls. And frankly, a lot of political God talk makes me a little uneasy.

"But tonight, Catholic Charities, with this honor, gives me the occasion to publicly make the link between my private faith and my public duty. So yes, tonight is a rare public event outside of my parish church in which it is appropriate for me to say quite simply &endash; I believe in Jesus Christ. And what moves me most about being a Christian is what Jesus taught us about how to be religious. He did not give priority to piety. He didn't make holiness the big thing. And he did not tell us to go around talking up God, either."

"What Jesus said, and what he showed with his life, was that the way to follow him was to take care of people. He told us in the Gospel of Matthew. The hungry, the naked, the homeless, the sick, and yes the imprisoned. When we feed them, clothe them, shelter them, take care of them, visit them &endash; then we have honored the Lord the way he asked us to. 'Truly, when you did to one of these least of my brethren, you did it to me.'"