Pope decries social Darwinism, excoriates billionaires who accumulate wealth, despise others
September 23, 2024
In a lengthy (5,100 words), impassioned, and wide-ranging address to the 3rd Encuentro Mundial de Movimientos Populares (3rd World Meeting of Popular Movements), Pope Francis urged the movements to continue to advocate, through nonviolent protest, for the “three t’s” (tierra, techo, and trabajo, or land, housing, and work).
The Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development organized the meeting to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the Pope’s first address to popular movements. The Vatican uncharacteristically has not published any translations of the Pope’s Spanish-language address, delivered on September 20, though Vatican News did offer an English-language summary of several of its themes.
In his address, Pope Francis praised the popular movements for not “being docile victims” as he defended his own focus on the poor.
“It is not the Pope, but Jesus, who puts them at the center, in that place,” Pope Francis said. “It is a question of our faith, and it cannot be negotiated. If you do not accept that, you are not Christian.”
Calling for higher taxes on billionaires, the Pontiff excoriated the greed of the wealthy who simply seek to accumulate more and more, despise the poor, and have forgotten the principle of the universal destination of goods.
“Blind competition to have more and more money is not a creative force, but a sick attitude, a path to perdition,” the Pope said. “This irresponsible, immoral and irrational behavior destroys creation and divides peoples. Let us not stop denouncing it.”
The Pontiff also deplored the social Darwinism that has led to the elimination of enanos (dwarves), presumably through abortion.
The Pope asked, “Do you see many dwarves on the street? Are there many dwarves? They disappeared. When I was younger, they were seen. Now there is no more. When they see a dwarf coming, to the trash.”
He continued:
Eliminating, selecting humanity can only be understood without love. If love is eliminated as a theological category, ethical, economic and political category, we lose our way. In the greedy mathematics of convenience, of individualism and accumulation there is no place for that. With the black veil of lack of love, we always fall into some form of “social Darwinism.” And do you know what that is? Social Darwinism is the law of the strongest, which justifies first indifference, then cruelty, and finally extermination. And that always comes from the Evil One.
“The human culture of a people is seen in how they take care of their children and how they take care of their elderly,” the Pope added. “If their old people are sent to the nursing home and left to die alone from grief, that people does not have a human culture. If children are not welcomed, not cared for, not helped to grow, that people has no future.”
The Pontiff also lamented corruption and online gambling and described the proposal for universal basic income—so that “no one is excluded from the basic goods necessary for subsistence”—as “strictly just.”
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Posted by: feedback -
Today 9:28 AM ET USA
The ideas of taxing the kulaks to oblivion and a universal basic income have been already put into practice for seven decades under the Soviet regime. They resulted in gulags filled with starving political prisoners, widespread alcoholism, hopelessness, and bread lines. Nobody who lived through it would want to go back. Francis sounds kind of "pro-life" here but not long ago he used his papal authority to implicitly approve giving Holy Communion to the most pro-abortion politicians in history.
