Photo by PoPville flickr user Elliot Mitchell
“Dear PoPville,
I had an odd experience on Saturday night. After an Uber ride from hell (I will leave that there), my partner and I ended up walking home up Connecticut Avenue to Dupont Circle. At the corner of Conn. and RI, we saw a couple of young men asking for money to light candles at St Matthew’s, just up the street. We thought nothing of it. A block further and we were confronted with another group of young men asking for money to light candles at the cathedral. And half a block further we were accosted by yet a THIRD group of young men asking for money to light candles.
Is this a new thing? Is the Cardinal telling his parishioners to go out an solicit people on the street for money for candles? Or is this a scam of some sort? All these guys looked like clean cut suburbanites but what they were asking for was very bizarre, especially at 10:30 on a Saturday night.”