Well he’s already hated on the right, and has been called all sorts of names like Marxist to socialist by the likes of Rush Limbaugh, and the rest of the cast over at Fox News.
But that is not stopping Pope Francis from continuing to preach about poverty. And in a message today, the Pope’s message was one of redistribution of wealth from the rich and greedy to the poor and needy.
Francis made the appeal during a speech to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and the heads of major U.N. agencies who are meeting in Rome this week.
Latin America’s first pope has frequently lashed out at the injustices of capitalism and the global economic system that excludes so much of humanity.
On Friday, Francis called for the United Nations to promote a “worldwide ethical mobilization” of solidarity with the poor in a new spirit of generosity.
He said a more equal form of economic progress can be had through “the legitimate redistribution of economic benefits by the state, as well as indispensable cooperation between the private sector and civil society.”
Francis had a similar message to the World Economic Forum in January and in his apostolic exhortation “The Joy of the Gospel.” That document, which denounced trickle-down economic theories as unproven and naive, provoked criticism in the U.S. that he was Marxist.
