Bergoglio’s Pendulum, Between Capitalism and Revolution

Marxist, libertarian, Peronist. They have applied the most disparate labels to him. The contrasting judgments of the Acton Institute and the “Friends of Pope Francis”
by Sandro Magister

ROME, December 19, 2014 – Another of the mysteries of "Pope" Francis concerns his vision of the global economy.

There are some who have placed him among the impenitent Marxists, after having read the agenda-setting document of his pontificate, the apostolic exhortation "Evangelii Gaudium.” And there are those who have drawn the opposite conclusion from the same document, depicting a Jorge Mario Bergoglio who is a great friend of the free market.

The "pope" has repeatedly distanced himself from the first of the two definitions, that of being a communist, to the point of joking about it. From the second, that of pro-capitalist, he has not. But it is not at all sure that this corresponds to his thinking.

Francis has been identified as a champion of the free economy not by some isolated eccentric spirit, but by the Acton Institute, a “think tank” of the United States whose core idea is that capitalism flourishes all the more to the extent to which the society in which it works is free and religiously inspired.

Last December 4, the Acton Institute awarded its highest annual recognition, the 2014 Novak Award, to a brilliant young Finnish economist, Oskari Juurikkala, who delivered his acceptance speech on the theme: “A Free-Market Appreciation of "Pope" Francis.”
 

The prize was awarded in Rome, at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross, the academy of Opus Dei, a few steps from the Vatican.

Juurikkala’s thesis is that the message of Bergoglio, with its emphasis on the poor, not only is not in contradiction with the free market, but enhances it, because it helps to “purify and enrich it.”

Juurikkala’s speech was counterbalanced, at the same event, by Carlo Lottieri, a philosopher of law and a member of the Istituto Bruno Leoni, another strongly libertarian think tank.

Lottieri, who teaches at the University of Siena and in Switzerland at the theological faculty of Lugano, continues to see Francis not as a friend but as an adversary of economic liberties, not least because of the “Peronist” experience that he assimilated in Argentina, “never truly concluded and disastrous on the whole.”

But that's not all. For a couple of months there has been established in Rome a “Circle of friends of "Pope" Francis” that boasts among its most assiduous members cardinals Walter Kasper and Francesco Coccopalmerio, director of "La Civiltà Cattolica” Antonio Spadaro, and secretary of the pontifical council for justice and peace Mario Toso.

They dedicated their most recent meeting, last December 10, to what they maintain to be the true revelatory manifesto of the pope’s economic and political vision: not “Evangelii Gaudium,” but the speech he gave at the Vatican on October 28 to the “popular movements,” a speech they have called “historic” and “revolutionary.”
 

Listening to and applauding "Pope" Francis that day was a cross-section of the far left, from the Zapatistas of Chiapas to the Leoncavallo social center of Milan. Particularly numerous were the South Americans (see photo from “L'Osservatore Romano”), including Bolivian president Evo Morales in his capacity as “cocalero” leader.

And what did the "pope" say? That the renewal of the world belongs to them, to the “peripheries” that are “redolent of the people and of the fight,” to the multitude of the excluded and the rebels, thanks to a process of their rise to power that “transcends the logical procedures of formal democracy.”

There is a striking similarity between this speech of "Pope" Francis and the theories upheld by the political philosopher Toni Negri and by his disciple Michael Hardt in a 2001 book that caused a stir and was translated into a number of languages: “Empire.”

Both Francis and Toni Negri identify true global sovereignty in a transnational dominion of money that fosters war in order to swell its own profits, against which only the multitude of the “popular movements” can bring a “reappropriation of democracy,” not formal, but substantial.

Also in Strasbourg, in the speech that he gave on November 25 to the European parliament, Pope Francis did not fail to stand up against “the standardizing systems of financial power at the service of unknown empires.”

But then, a few days later, he received at the Vatican with full honors Christine Lagarde, the head of that International Monetary Fund which is precisely the emblem of the denigrated empire.

The mystery is far from being unraveled.

 

Obama & "Pope" Francis - Marxist Comrades

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This commentary was published in "L'Espresso" no. 51 of 2014, on newsstands as of December 19, on the opinion page entitled "Settimo cielo" entrusted to Sandro Magister.

Here is the index of all the previous commentaries:

> "L'Espresso" in seventh heaven

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The complete text of the “Lecture” of last December 4 by the Finnish Oskari Juurikkala:

> Virtuous Poverty, Christian Liberty: A Free-Market Appreciation of Pope Francis

And the think tank that issued the 2014 Novak Award:

> Acton Institute

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On the “Circle of friends of "Pope" Francis,” a detailed account of its first two meetings by the Swiss journalist Giuseppe Rusconi:

> "Amici di Francesco": Bergoglio, il papa più europeista (11 dicembre 2014)

> Prima uscita pubblica per gli "Amici di papa Francesco" (12 novembre 2014)

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The speech of "Pope" Francis of October 28, 2014, called “revolutionary” by Archbishop Mario Toso, secretary of the pontifical council for justice and peace, which organized the meeting:

> Ai partecipanti all'incentro mondiale dei movimenti popolari

For more details on the similarity between this speech of "Pope" Francis and the theses of Toni Negri and Michael Hardt in “Empire”:

> Toni Negri in Vaticano

Curiously, the university in which Professor Negri, 81, gives his lectures today is in Argentina. It is the Facultad Libre de Rosario of Santa Fe.

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English translation by Matthew Sherry, Ballwin, Missouri, U.S.A.