Pope Francis has said that caring about the world’s poor does not make him a communist.
The Pope called on participants at the World Meeting of Popular Movements last week in Rome to attack the structural causes of poverty and to defend workers’ rights.
In a six-page speech, 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.
“They don’t understand that love for the poor is at the centre of the Gospel,” he said.
“Demanding this isn’t unusual, it’s the social doctrine of the Church.”
The address comes after right-wing US commentators had said the Pope is a Marxist because he criticised capitalist excess and demanded that governments should redistribute social benefits to the needy.
The Pope’s speech also further highlighted his concerns for the environment, as well as the rights of farmers to have land, and for young people to be employed.
He said these issues would be dealt with in his upcoming encyclical on ecology and the environment.
The Pope said 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”.
The struggle for just causes “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!”
Christians must also confront the destructive effects of what the Pope called the “Empire of Money” – forcible displacements and migrations, human and drug trafficking, war, and violence.
Sources
- The Tablet
- The Independent
- Image: Koin