Pope Francis: 'The wealthy few feast on what, in justice, belongs to all'. Is this true?

The Pope on Sunday preached

"Let us ask for the grace to hear the cry of all those tossed by the waves of life. The cry of the poor....It is the cry of all those Lazaruses who weep while the wealthy few feast on what, in justice, belongs to all. Injustice is the perverse root of poverty."

We ought to hear the cry of the poor and friendless and others that the Pope lists. Yes the wealthy few, who include everybody without money worries in Western countries, should give away their possessions to the poor, if they do not have dependents to look after or other obligations to fulfill. But do the belongings of the wealthy few 'belong, in justice, to all'? This is something else and, in fact, a strange doctrine.

Strange for Catholics, at least. As my mentor Mgr. Alfred Gilbey said, the Catholic Church, which preaches the voluntary renunciation of worldly possessions, has always been the firmest defender of property rights.

I never understood why Anglicans in our day no longer not like singing this verse from Mrs. Alexander's famous hymn All things bright and beautiful:

The rich man in his castle,

The poor man at his gate,

God made them high and lowly,

And ordered their estate.

I remember in 1992 skimming with great impatience a book by some clerical fool who criticised an Anglican catechism from 1911, for stating the idea that God makes some rich and some poor. If one is a theist this is a plain and obvious truth. I wonder why people think it is not.

Nor is inequality, which is natural and inevitable, usually 'the root of poverty'. On the contrary, sharing out the wealth of the few among the many is not only unjust in theory but in practice makes everyone poorer. Unequal societies like Hong Kong, Singapore and modern China have much higher living standards than egalitarian ones like Cuba or Mao's China.

The Pope's ideas do sound like those of General Peron, under whose rule he grew up. The socialist Peron, who came to power in an Argentina that was part of the First World and had a standard of living higher than Canada's, dragged his country down to the Third World where it remains. General Pinochet of neighbouring Chile, for all his brutality, by introducing the free market economics of the Chicago School made his country the richest in Latin America. If, as the Chilean President forecast last year, Chile becomes a First World country by 2025 Pinochet will be the man to thank.

The poor you have always with you, Jesus said, but we have far, far fewer of them now than when I went to university. As mentioned in my last post, in 1981 44.3 percent of the world population of 4.5 billion lived in extreme poverty, whereas last year 9.6 percent of a world population of 7.5 billion did. Even allowing for the huge increase in the world's population, this is a vast decrease in the number of people living in extreme poverty.

This huge change had nothing to do with socialism. Aid may have helped, though this is disputed, but most of the credit for this great change belongs to free market economics and free trade.

Socialism was condemned by Pope Pius IX and many other popes, including Pope John XXIII who said that “no Catholic could subscribe even to moderate Socialism.” Catholic leftists say that this does not apply to the mild socialism of democratic, so-called socialist parties, though I forget their arguments, but rather to Marxists and the far left. It would seem to apply, if you ask me, to saying that the rich are feasting on what really belongs in justice to all.