Pope Francis - economic naif / dunce

Peter Foster on the Pope’s economic naivete and ignorance:

 ... the serious issue of whether the Pope knows what he’s talking about when it comes to his professed concern for the poor. 

The appropriate approach to poverty is not to sanctify it but eradicate it . ... if Pope Francis really is concerned about relieving poverty, his reflexive anti-capitalist attitudes are pointing precisely in the wrong direction.

Pope John Paul II actually praised the free market as “the most efficient instrument for utilizing resources and effectively responding to needs. ... his successors  ... returned to the Church’s more traditional anti-capitalist stance, now larded with environmental concerns and support for UN-based global governance. ... Pope Francis came out of the Vatican gate in March sounding like the theological wing of the Occupy movement ...

... if the poor are truly his priority, then surely what is important is not “the gap” but the massive reductions in levels of absolute poverty in recent decades ... one can’t help asking whether the Pope is more concerned with relieving the poor or bringing down the rich.

he exposed his own economic confusion, first in implying that social benefits come only from charitable intention  ... and second in peddling the canard that promotion of markets represents some kind of quasi religious faith...