The annual Christmas address to the Roman Curia are usually enlightening, especially if attention is paid to moments when the Pope goes off script. The Christmas address for 2020 was no exception:
At another point in the speech, Pope Francis added as an aside: “I am reminded of what that holy Brazilian bishop said: ‘When I take care of the poor, they say of me that I am a saint; but when I ask and I question: ‘Why so much poverty?’ They call me ‘Communist’’.
The Pope is quoting Brazilian Archbishop, the late Helder Camara. He certainly was no communist, most communists doubtless being too moderate for him. He was a complete Leftist and a proponent of liberation theology. He was one of the mover and shakers at Vatican II and was one of the main proponents of the Pact of the Catacombs, go here and here to read it. Unlike some proponents of liberation theology he did not condemn violence used against those who could be considered oppressors, although he said that was not his way. Studying the life of Camara gives us another key to understanding the Pope.
Yes Helder Camara is bad guy along with his advocate anti-pope Bergoglio. Both of them are votaries of the devil’s program of deception that service to Man is supreme.
Occasional rhetorical feints aside, this papacy is about the City of Man. The Church as amiable footwashing handmaid to Western neoliberal elites.
Bingo.
rhetorical feints ✔️ More than occasional.
He is a master deceiver
‘When I take care of the poor, they say of me that I am a saint; but when I ask and I question: ‘Why so much poverty?’ They call me ‘Communist’’.
Clergy live in an oddball economy which runs on donations and endowment income and perform straightforward tasks indifferently if not poorly. It doesn’t occur to him that people are poor because, collectively, that’s what’s being produced right now. The more obscure point is that Latin American institutions leave most people with fuzzy and barely enforceable title to their property, inhibit commercial transactions because contracts are unenforceable, leave everyone and their property at the mercy of hoodlums and gangsters if they cannot afford private security, and leave everyone at the mercy of mercurial civil servants churning out reams of regulatory text each day and that all of that inhibits the production of goods and services and sluices income to the already prosperous.
The problem with clerics making comments on economics is that they have no education in that field and so are mystified by its functions. Had they been given a good dose of Adam Smith and Milton Friedman in seminary they might display enough judgement to actually be taken seriously when they comment on the subject.