Pope Blames Capitalist ‘God of Money’ for Climate Change, War Refugees

In an interview aired September 14th, Pope Francis blamed the capitalist “god of money” for most of the world’s problems.

The interview was conducted by Vatican journalist Aura Miguel with Portugal-based Radio Renascença (Renaissance).

The Pope said the current refugee crisis in Europe is being caused by an unjust socio-economic system that worships “the god of money.”

“This is the tip of the iceberg. We see these refugees, these poor people who are escaping from war, escaping from hunger, but that’s the tip of the iceberg. But underlying that is the cause, and the cause is a socio-economic system that is bad, unjust, because within an economic system, within everything, within the world, speaking of the ecological problem, within the socio-economic society, in politics, the person always has to be the center. And today’s dominant economic system has removed the person from the center, and at the center is the god of money. It’s the fashionable god today. I mean, there are statistics. I don’t remember very well, but — this is not exact and I could be making a mistake— 17% of the population has 80% of the wealth.”

The Pope went on to blame capitalism for climate change that is destroying the earth.

“Today, the world is at war, is at war against itself,” the Pope said. “But it is also at war against the earth, because it’s destroying the earth, that is, our common home. The environment, the glaciers are melting. In the Arctic, the polar bear goes increasingly northward to survive.”

The Pope went on to say that he recognized that territorial security conditions today are not the same as other times. “Because it’s true that 400 kilometers from Sicily we have an extremely cruel terrorist guerilla war, no? So the danger of infiltration is real, right?” he asked during the interview.

The Pope mentioned the “god of money” again when he talked about housing refugees in “every parish, every religious institute, every monastery.” He said that some church communities resisted opening empty convents to house refugees.

“It’s that here also there is the temptation of the god of money,” the Pope said. “Some congregations say no, now that this convent is empty, we’re going to make a hotel, an albergo, and we can receive people and with this we’ll support ourselves or earn money. Well, if you want to do that, pay taxes. A religious school because it’s religious is exempt from taxes but if it works like a hotel then pay taxes like everybody else.”

Pope Francis has often been accused of sounding like a socialist. At the Second World Meeting of the Popular Movements in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, he said, “An unfettered pursuit of money rules. The service of the common good is left behind.” The Pope also quoted St. Basil of Caesarea, who described the unfettered pursuit of wealth as “the dung of the devil.”

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