The modern Catholic church has a history of being more socially conscious than Protestants and also critical of aspects of capitalism. But Pope Francis seems to be more clearly anti-capitalist than previous Popes.
"I can only say that the communists have stolen our flag. The flag of the poor is Christian. Poverty is at the center of the Gospel," he said, citing Biblical passages about the need to help the poor, the sick and the needy.
"Communists say that all this is communism. Sure, twenty centuries later. So when they speak, one can say to them: 'but then you are Christian'," he said, laughing.
http://news.yahoo.com/pope-says-communists-closet-christians-142947603.htmlPerhaps not really surprising. Still, not the way John Paul II would have put it...
This one on war and capitalism is definitely out of the Catholic mainstream IMO. But I would like to hear your thoughts.
http://www.economist.com/blogs/erasmus/2014/06/francis-capitalism-and-war"We are discarding an entire generation to maintain an economic system that can't hold up any more, a system that to survive, must make war, as all great empires have done. But as a third world war can't be waged, they make regional wars...they produce and sell weapons, and with this,
the balance sheets of the idolatrous economies, the great world economies that sacrifice man at the feet of the idol of money, are resolved..."
