The Pope has given his first interview, with the news agency, Crux, and the nice thing about it is there are no surprises. Pope revolted at obscene wealth and the growing gap between rich and poor? Jesus Christ wasn’t keen on the rich either.  Or, as Leo put it when he was asked about growing polarisation in society:

‘One [factor] which I think is very significant is the continuously wider gap between the income levels of the working class and the money that the wealthiest receive… Yesterday, the news that Elon Musk is going to be the first trillionaire in the world. What does that mean and what’s that about? If that is the only thing that has value anymore, then we’re in big trouble.’

That’s rather in the spirit of Rerum Novarum, an encyclical written by the last Pope Leo, from whom this pope took his name. That was about the late nineteenth century class struggle, and it articulated the rights of the worker to a wage that would enable him to support his family, pretty well the opposite of the gig economy. It’s this disparity between obscene wealth and basic incomes........

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