Pope Leo blasts economy that marginalizes poor while wealthy live in bubble of luxury – Brandon Sun

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Leo XIV criticized the way the wealthy elite live in a “bubble of comfort and luxury” while poor people suffer on the margins, reaffirming in his first teaching document Thursday that he is in perfect step with his predecessor Pope Francis on issues of social and economic injustice.

On Thursday, the Vatican released a document titled “I Loved You,” which Francis began writing in the final months of his life but never finished. Leo, elected in May, attributed the text to Francis and quoted it repeatedly but said he made the document his own and signed it.

The 100-page document traces the history of Christianity's ongoing concern for poor people, from biblical quotations and the teachings of the church fathers to the sermons of recent popes on caring for migrants, prisoners and victims of human trafficking. Leo especially credits women's religious orders for fulfilling God's mandate to care for the sick, feed the poor, and welcome strangers, and also praises lay people's movements advocating for land, housing, and jobs for the most disadvantaged in society.

The conclusion Leo draws is that the Catholic Church's “preferential option for the poor” has been there from the beginning, is non-negotiable, and is in fact the very essence of what it means to be a Christian. It calls for a renewed commitment to addressing the structural causes of poverty while providing unquestioning charity to those in need.

“When the church kneels before a leper, an emaciated child, or an anonymous dying person, it is fulfilling its deepest calling: to love the Lord where He is most disfigured,” Leo writes.

Quoting Francis, criticism of the rich

Leo frequently quotes Francis, including in some of the Argentine pope's most quoted talking points on the global “economy that kills” and criticism of trickle-down economics. Francis has emphasized these points since the start of his pontificate in 2013, saying he wants “a church that is poor and for the poor.”

“God has a special place in the heart of those who are discriminated against and oppressed, and He asks us, His church, to make strong and radical choices on behalf of the weakest,” Leo writes.

Echoing Francis, Leo protests against the “illusion of happiness” that results from the accumulation of wealth. “Thus, in a world where there are more and more poor, we paradoxically see the rise of a wealthy elite living in a bubble of comfort and luxury, almost in a different world from ordinary people.”

Francis' frequent criticism of capitalism has angered many conservative and wealthy Catholics, especially in the United States, who have accused the Argentine Jesuit of being a Marxist.

In a recent interview, Leo said that such misguided criticism cannot be directed at him. “The fact that I'm American means, among other things, that people can't say, as they said about Francis: 'He doesn't understand the United States, he just doesn't see what's going on,'” Leo told the Catholic website Crux.

As a result, Leo's acceptance of Francis' teaching on poverty and the church's duty to care for the weakest is an important affirmation, especially in Leo's first teaching document.

Signed on the Feast of Saint Francis

Leo signed the text on October 4, the feast of St. Francis of Assisi, the 13th-century mendicant monk who gave up his wealth to live poor among the poor. The date was not accidental.

The late Pope Francis named himself after the saint, and one of the pontiff's most important documents, “Fratelli Tutti” (All Brothers), was published on the feast day of October 4, 2020.

Leo, too, seems to be inspired by the saint's example: As a young priest, the former Robert Prévost left the comforts of home to work as a missionary in Peru as a member of the Augustinian religious order, one of the other ancient mendicant orders that considers community, the sharing of public property, and service to others as central tenets of its spirituality.

“The fact that some dismiss or ridicule charitable work as if it were an obsession on the part of a few rather than the burning heart of the church’s mission convinces me of the need to go back and re-read the Gospel so that we do not risk replacing it with the wisdom of this world,” Leo writes.

Reference to liberation theology

Leo's emphasis on the church's age-old “preferential option for the poor” is unusual given the Vatican's rocky history with liberation theology, a Latin American-inspired Catholic theology whose mantra has been “preferential option for the poor.”

Vatican with St. John Paul II devoted much effort to combating liberation theology and disciplining some of its most famous advocates, arguing that they had misinterpreted Jesus' preference for the poor as a Marxist call for armed rebellion.

Leo, on the other hand, further reinforced the concept by citing several of the founding documents of the Latin American Church on the subject. He cited as an inspiration Saint Oscar Romero, the Salvadoran archbishop killed in 1980 by right-wing death squads protesting his preaching against the army's repression of the poor.

Leo's text minimized controversy over liberation theology by stating that the Vatican's 1984 crackdown on its supporters “was not initially well received by all.”

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