What do the rich owe to the poor? The Tablet’s theatre critic – who admits to owning a second home – has written a play for radio that raises the issue in dramatic form

Among the distinctions of the current Pope is twice to have turned down very nice houses. As Archbishop of Buenos Aires and then cardinal, he left empty the episcopal palace, living instead in a small city apartment. And, for five years, the papal apartments in the Apostolic Palace have been unoccupied, while Pope Francis continues to live at the Vatican’s Domus Sanctae Marthae guest house, his lodgings during the enclave that elected him.

This unaccommodating attitude to fancy digs suggests that, for Francis, the question of where we choose to live – for those who have the choice – is unavoidably a moral issue. It is faced, in provocative circumstances, by a well-off English family in The Moon That Night, a BBC Radio 4 play that I’ve written for this year’s Christmas schedules.

On the car journey between their large London house and their Cotswolds cottage on 24 December, a couple – Anthony and Emily – and their teenage children reflect with pleasure that their local cleaner and “key holder” has promised to turn up the Aga and start the log burner. But when the family finally reach the Old Bakery, after attending a Christingle and carol service at the local thirteenth-century Anglican church, they find that their employee and her teenage son are living in the cottage.

Having lost their own rented home following a “reassessment” of their benefits, they have reached the conclusion that, as someone puts it: “We’ve got two houses. They don’t have one now. You do the maths.”

What the unexpected residents are doing is not illegal occupation, or a political protest against inequality of wealth and housing. A twist – which you’ll have to listen to discover – reveals that they have reason to believe they have a right to be there.