Bergoglio (Pope Francis) on the sexual trafficking of young women, child homelessness, sweatshops

[Catherina]

31. On this, definitely though I'm sure the investor class will see things differently.

Forbes already started with some garbage that he's wrong and it's the profits of neoliberalism that pull the poor out of their poverty. It was so obscene that now I need to find it again for this post.


Found it.

Is Jorge Bergoglio, The New Pope Francis, A Capitalist?

...

So today, while on an investment committee conference call, when the white smoke appeared and shortly thereafter we learned that an Argentinian Cardinal named Jorge Bergoglio had been elected and had chosen for himself the name Pope Francis, I decided that this time I was going to share my first thought with friends and colleagues on the call. Here it is: the Pope will probably move the Church culturally to the right, and more likely move it economically to the left.

In other words, the age old answer to the question, “Is the Pope Catholic?” is, “Yes.” But the answer to the question, “Is the Pope capitalist?” is, “Probably not.”

...

But let’s not ignore the fact that the poor profoundly benefit when the economy grows; more so, even than when the church offers them a soup kitchen to visit. Neither the rightist Peron, nor the current leftist administration of Argentina has done much good for the poor. A century ago it was one of the world’s more prosperous countries, but it’s repeated rejection of both classical liberalism and (later) neo-liberalism, caused its prosperity to plummet compared with much of the rest of the world.

It is no coincidence that Argentina’s score of 47 on the Index of Economic Freedom (placing it as a miserable 160th of the freest counties in the world) accompanies its terrible poverty. Even mild attempts at ‘austerity’ were criticized by the Cardinal and much of the Argentine Church, but when austerity was abandoned and the currency devalued and debt reneged upon, the lot of Argentina’s poor became even poorer.

...

The new pope seems like a wonderful man. Humble, simple, decent. But if he is going to help the Church do as much as it possibly can for the poor, he’d do well, not just to look to the wonderful St. Francis, who became poor to serve the poor, but also to the John Paul the Great who, having lived under socialism in its most virulent form, embraced the market economy for its ability to liberate the poor.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jerrybowyer/2013/03/13/is-jorge-bergoglio-the-new-pope-francis-a-capitalist/

I'm not sure what planet the author was on when he wrote this but I hope he didn't write it with a straight face. I gag. Hard.

Read the whole article. I assure you it's a.... *masterpiece*.