Umbrian 'Umble

In tribute to all the venture capitalists, stock-market gamblers and squillionaire manbabies who have recently emerged as hard-working, plain-speaking men of the people, the Italian government is to make the feast day of Francis of Assisi into a national holiday. Francis was born into a wealthy family but renounced worldly goods to take up the life of a mendicant friar; nevertheless, he was canonised by the founder of the mediaeval inquisition and declared Italy's patron saint by Hitler's pope, which presumably is how he made himself an acceptable paragon to the heirs of Mussolini.