Quotes

In response to critics who label him a Marxist, Pope Francis responds: No, my critique of capitalism is not because I'm a Marxist—it's because I'm a Christian. Since his election last March, the pope has been offering a critique of what he has called "unfettered capitalism" and the "idolatry of money." Just days after the papal conclave, the new pope declared, "Oh, how I would like a poor Church for the poor," and in May he slammed the global financial system for "tyrannizing the poor" and turning humans into expendable consumer goods. And he has consistently been articulating the critique ever since. But it was the pope's more recent comments that really freaked some people out—and even drew the labels "radical" and "Marxist" from detractors. In his recent apostolic exhortation called Evangelii Gaudium, Pope Francis wrote: "As long as the problems of the poor are not radically resolved by rejecting the absolute autonomy of markets and financial speculation and by attacking the structural causes of inequality, no solution will be found for the world's problems or, for that matter, to any problems." — Paul Brandeis Raushenbush