In the wake of the publication of Pope Francis's encyclical letter Laudato Si and of the pope's recent speeches in Latin America, many supporters of the capitalist economy in the West might be forgiven for thinking that His Holiness has something against them.
Again and again, Pope Francis excoriates an economy based on materialism and greed, and with prophetic urgency, he speaks out against a new colonialism that exploits the labor of those in poorer countries. With startling bluntness, he characterizes the dominant economic form in the developed world as "an economy that kills." Moreover, in a speech delivered in Bolivia, a country under the command of a socialist president, the pope seemed -- almost in a Marxist vein -- to be calling on the poor to seize power from the wealthy and take command of their own lives.
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