Wait a minute…Pope Francis is celebrating businessmen? That can’t be! Nope. He did. Are we now on the verge of the Apocalypse?
Speaking at the Ilva steel plant in Genoa on Saturday, Pope Francis gave a nod to businessmen:
“There can’t be a good economy without good businessmen, without their capacity to create and to produce,” the leftist Jesuit said.
“The world of work is a human priority, and it’s also a priority for the pope. There’s always been a friendship between the church and work, starting with Jesus, who was a worker.”
The shock didn’t end there.
Pope Francis even noted that state intervention with the welfare state wasn’t a sustainable solution:
“A monthly check from the state that allows you to keep the family afloat doesn’t solve the problem. It has to be resolved with work for everyone,” he averred. “When work is weakened, it’s democracy that enters into crisis. There’s a social compact.”
It ended there, however. He started to attack speculators, calling them a “sickness of the economy.”
“A sickness of the economy is the progressive transformation of business people into speculators,” Francis said. “A speculator is a figure similar to what Jesus in the gospels called ‘hired-hands’ as opposed to good shepherds.”
The pope added that competition can become self-destructive.
“When it’s a system of individual incentives that puts workers into competition among themselves, you can obtain some advantages, but it ends up ruining the trust that’s the soul of any organization,” the Pope explained. “When a crisis comes, the company falls apart. It implodes, because there’s no longer any harmony.”
So, his comments are a mixed bag. At least it’s a nice change of pace from the typical anti-capitalist, pro-government rants.
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