Pope promises to reflect on his critique of capitalism

Pope Francis has promised to study criticism made in the United States of his pronouncements on globalisation, unfettered capitalism and the exploitation of the environment ahead of his visit there in a few weeks’ time.

The Pope made his remarks after a visit to three countries in Latin America during which he repeatedly attacked elements of free market capitalism which he said increased poverty and misery. Francis is to address the US Congress in Washington D.C. on 24 September and the UN General Assembly in New York on 25 September. 

Speaking to the World Meeting of Popular Movements in Santa Cruz, Bolivia on Thursday last week, Francis said: “Let us say no to an economy of exclusion and inequality, where money rules, rather than service. That economy kills. It excludes. That economy destroys Mother Earth.

“And behind all this pain, death and destruction there is the stench of what Basil of Caesarea [330-379] called ‘the dung of the devil’.”

Asked on his return flight from Paraguay to Rome on 12 July whether he would be bringing the same message to the US, he said he would begin “studying” for his trip now, and would review the economic arguments and criticism made in the US about his comments in Latin America.

Many US commentators have pointed out that capitalism has in fact raised millions of people out of poverty. “If I have not dialogued with the person who made the criticism,” he said, “I don’t have the right” to comment on what the person’s saying. “I have heard that some criticisms were made in the United States but I have not read them and have not had time to study them well,” the Pope told reporters.

Asked why he talks so much about the rich and the poor and so rarely about middle-class people who work and pay taxes, Pope Francis replied, “I do need to delve further into this magisterium.”

Pope Francis was asked about his reaction to the crucifix on top of a hammer and sickle — the communist symbol — that Bolivian President Evo Morales gave him on 8 July. The crucifix was designed by Jesuit Fr Luis Espinal, who was kidnapped, tortured and killed in Bolivia in 1980. The Pope said he did know that Fr Espinal was among the Latin American theologians in the late 1970s who found Marxist political, social and economic analysis helpful. It was four years after the Jesuit’s murder that the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith said plainly that Marxist theory had no place in a Catholic theology, the Pope pointed out.

Fr Espinal, he said, “was a special man with a great deal of geniality”. The crucifix, the Pope said, fits into the category of “protest art”, which some people may find offensive, although he said he did not. “I’m taking it home with me,” Pope Francis said.

Mr Morales had given the Pope two honours, one making him part of the Order of Fr Espinal, a designation that comes with a medal bearing a copy of the hammer-and-sickle crucifix.

“I prayed about this,” the Pope said. He did not want to offend Mr Morales or for the medals to end up in a Vatican museums storeroom. So he placed them at the feet of a statue of Mary and asked that they be transferred to the national shrine of Our Lady of Copacabana on the shore of Lake Titicaca.

(See Margaret Hebblethwaite and James Roberts, pages 4-5)