There are times, sadly, when the economic pronouncements of Pope Francis have more than a touch of Juan Perón about them.
This may be one of them.
“We don´t want this globalized economic system which does us so much harm. Men and women have to be at the centre as God wants, not money. . … The world has become an idolator of this god called money … It is not only a problem of Italy and Europe.. it is a consequence of a world choice, of an economic system that brings about tragedy, an economic system that has at its centre an idol which is called money”.
Warnings of the way that money can be a source of spiritual corruption are, of course, nothing new to Christianity (or, indeed, a good number of other religions). Just the other day the Pope was citing (with, I feel, a degree of approval) the fact that some early church fathers had described money as ‘the dung of the devil’, but the reference to the evils of a ‘globalized economic system’ contained within this latest comment seems to be something a little different, a nod to the notion of economic autarky that was such a notable characteristic of the Argentina of Pope Francis’s teenage years.
And, no, it didn’t work out so well.