Pope Francis called on activists to attack the structural causes of poverty and defend workers’ rights, adding that caring about the poor did not make him a communist.
Francis was speaking to participants at the World Meeting of Popular Movements, which is holding a three-day conference in Rome this week, partly organised by the Vatican’s Pontifical Council of Justice and Peace.
The conference for union members, landless, peasant farmers, precarious workers and domestica wokers among other includes the Argentine Excluded Workers Movement, the Brazilian Rural Workers Without Land Movement as well as Bolivian President Evo Morale who was there to represent indigenous tribes.
In a six-page speech delivered in his native Spanish, Pope Francis lamented that “land, housing and work are increasingly unavailable to the majority” of the world’s population.
“It is strange, but if I talk like this, there are those who say that the Pope is a communist,” he added.
He said that the Christians must fight against social injustice, adding that Church doctrine commands Catholics to fight “for the dignity of the rural family, for water, for life and for all to benefit from the fruits of the earth”.
He said it was right “to combat the structural causes of poverty, inequality, unemployment and [loss of] land, housing, social and labour rights”. Christians must also confront the destructive effects of what he called the “Empire Of Money” – namely forcible displacements and migrations, human and drug trafficking, war, violence.
The pontiff also spoke out in defence of workers' rights, calling on grass-roots movements to "keep up the fight".
"It does us all good," Francis said. "Let's say together with our heart: no family without a roof, no peasant farmer without land, no worker without rights, no person without dignified labour!"
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