Is the Pope a Communist?

Analysis

BBC

Government, Politics, News

4.6 • 1K Ratings

🗓️ 8 June 2015

⏱️ 28 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Pope Francis' critique of modern economics has made him an icon for the Left and prompted claims that he is a Communist. The leader of 1.2 billion Catholics has called capitalism, at best, a source of inequality and, at worst, a killer.

Edward Stourton examines the Pope's critique of the free market system and explores the origins of his thinking in Latin America and in Catholic Social Teaching. Is Pope Francis, as his critics claim, dragging his church to the Left and promoting a Marxist branch of liberation theology? And what does his insistence on seeing the world through the eyes of the poor mean for modern notions of charity?

We hear from the Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster, Vincent Nichols; corporate lawyer turned Catholic priest, Fr Augusto Zampini Davies; Chief Economist at The Heritage Foundation (a free market think tank based in Washington), Stephen Moore; Professor or Finance, Public Policy and Ethics at St Mary's University, Twickenham and Programme Director at the Institute for Economic Affairs, Philip Booth; Labour Peer Maurice Glasman; and Austen Ivereigh, author of The Great Reformer - Francis and the Making of a Radical Pope.

Producer: Helen Grady

Photo Credit: Tim Widden.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Thanks for the downloading analysis.
0:03.0	One man has become the new figurehead for the global left,
0:06.0	yet he leads one of the most conservative organisations in the world.
0:10.0	So who is he and what are his politics over to Edward Sturton.
0:15.0	Let's start with the case for the prosecution.
0:17.0	It's made here by the right-wing American radio host, or Shockchok if you prefer Rush Limbaugh.
0:23.0	I ran across this, I don't know what it's called, the latest papal offering statement from Pope Francis.
0:32.0	Up until this I have to tell you I was admiring the man.
0:36.6	But the Pope here has now gone beyond Catholicism here and this is pure political.
0:42.0	Somebody has either written this for him or gotten to him.
0:45.0	This is just pure Marxism.
0:48.0	In this program, I'll be asking whether he's right.
0:51.0	Is the Pope a communist? You're likely to hear a lot more of that kind of thing
0:55.3	when Francis goes to the United States this autumn, and it's not just coming from
0:59.6	mouthy contrarians shouting on the radio. I think this is a pope who clearly has some Marxist leanings.
1:06.7	It's unquestionable that he is a very vocal skepticism of capitalism and free enterprise, and as one who believes that the free
1:14.7	enterprise system is the goose that lays the golden eggs that creates the wealth
1:18.2	that we have in America and and that is making people around the world
1:21.6	wealthier I find that to be very troubling.
1:24.5	Stephen Moore is the chief economist at the Washington Think Tank The Heritage Foundation
1:28.9	and used to write on economics for the Wall Street Journal.
1:32.1	Francis is the leader of more than a billion Catholics and his influence extends well beyond the church.
	...

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