Pope says financial speculators are like mercenaries

Monday, May 29th, 2017

Pope Francis compared financial speculators to mercenaries when he visited an Italian steel factory on Saturday.

He went on to demand dignity for working people.

“Without work for all there will not be dignity for all,” he told several thousand workers at the factory.

“The progressive transformation of the entrepreneur into a speculator is an economic illness,” he told them.

“The speculator is the same as a mercenary who has no company and sees workers only as a means to make profits.”

Francis went on to praise the honour and dignity of the “good worker” and the “good boss” who shared the fruits of the labour.

These he contrasted with speculators whose drive to make profits is at the expense of their workers, many of whom are left on the scrapheap of unemployment.

Work is important and there are “few greater joys than those experienced by working,” he pointed out.

“Without work one can survive — but to live you need work,” he said.

He is concerned about what he calls “democracy in crisis” where many workers are held down by a society that “sees only [the value of] consumption and does not understand the value of work and sweat”.

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