Meanwhile, Rome’s wealth is measured in the TRILLIONS.
He’s an Argentine, raised in a nanny-state that was ruled by military coups, Peron, the goddess Evita, more military cliques, Peron again, a brief flirt with democracy, and then a couple of kleptomaniacs.
And, by his own admission, he hasn’t watched television in more than twenty years. (I don’t know if he has ever used the Internet.) IOW, his world view is going to be very constricted, and very different from that of an American.
He is, imho, close to South American liberation theologians, if not quite one himself. And he is therefore going to be repeating their analysis of the world’s problems.
That this comes from ignorance, and not malice, doesn’t make the result any better.
I would like to hope Francis has a heart that will eventually realize there is a biblical reason for open markets and also for standards governing them, which have to do with honesty rather than with “equalized outcomes.”
The problem of the poor is biblically addressed in a different dimension, which is called voluntary charity. This isn’t any restriction on markets. This is choices by people who carry on the markets.