The poor pope

PITY the pontiff. Not only does he face the urgent task of sorting out sordid power struggles in the heart of the Vatican; in the wider world of Catholicism, rival political camps are eagerly looking forward to his first pronouncements on social and economic questions.

On the political left, people have hailed a pope from outside Europe who had guided his Argentine flock through the economic recession and social upheaval that came to a head with the devaluation of the peso in 2001. That could affect his thinking on present-day crises, including the travails of the euro zone. Conservative Catholics, meanwhile, cherish how the new pope is personally close to his traditionalist predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, whose retirement home is only a mitre’s toss away from Francis’s own humble hostel.

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But the pope’s dilemma (and perhaps his opportunity) lie in the ambivalence of his inheritance. Benedict reaffirmed and in some way sharpened conservative ideas on touchstone issues like abortion, euthanasia, homosexuality and artificial contraception. But out of the Vatican also came some remarkably radical opinions about society, economics and global governance.

That paradox was palpable in the meatiest of Benedict’s three encyclicals—detailed and closely-argued pronouncements on faith and the world. Caritas in Veritate (Charity in Truth), published in 2009, seemed to vary in tone. Some bits bore Benedict’s personal signature (contending that economic development could not be separated from Catholic ideas on the sanctity of life); others (deploring inequality and exploitation) seemed to have been penned by the Pontifical Council on Justice and Peace, the most radical arm of the Vatican.

Bear in mind, it says, that “grave imbalances are produced when economic action, conceived merely as an engine for wealth creation, is detached from political action, conceived as a means for pursuing justice through redistribution.” In the document’s critique of the market, many saw the hand of a council consultant, Stefano Zamagni, an Italian economist.

The council has since burnished its firebrand reputation with two big pronouncements: one calling for a new sort of global central bank with a more interventionist mandate, and the other urging business leaders to observe stricter ethical norms, including “fair taxes to local communities” and to avoid “rent-seeking” behaviour.

Anna Rowlands, a professor at King’s College London, sees the Vatican’s critique of skewed economic transactions as a good basis for more radical thinking: “The church has already spoken about the need for reciprocity and justice in the marketplace.” She expects Francis “to have things to say about the extreme inequality that exists at the global level.”

Tell it to the birds
Philip Booth, a Catholic economist at the Institute of Economic Affairs, a British free-market think-tank, wants his church’s approach to move in a different direction—towards crunchier thinking about the state and the abuses that an over-mighty one can easily commit. Like almost every other Catholic, conservative or radical, who thinks about economics, he sees an important starting point in a famous Vatican document of 1891, Rerum Novarum, which recognised the usefulness of trade unions and collective bargaining. But he thinks that ideas like “solidarity” and “subsidiarity” or devolved decision-making have been debased in left-wing Catholic discourse, to imply support for a redistributionist state. In fact, voluntary or private initiatives can often be a better way of showing “solidarity” with the poor.

He also wants a sharper critique of bodies such as the European Union. The English version of Caritas in Veritate calls for a United Nations “with real teeth” even though the rendering in other languages was somewhat milder. In Mr Booth’s view such rose-tinted thinking about international bureaucracies fails to understand the problems of mission creep and corrupt in-house cultures. Something that Francis may find all too close to his new home.