Fox Business host Stuart Varney expressed his displeasure with Pope Francis on Wednesday, claiming the pontiff was wrong to attack “deified markets” and the idolatry of money.

“Capitalism, in my opinion, is a liberator,” he said. “The free choice of millions of people is the essence of freedom. In my opinion, society benefits most when people are free to pursue their own self-interest. I know that sounds like a contradiction, but it is not. When individuals are free, we collectively are better off in every way, financially and spiritually.”

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Varney said Pope John Paul II understood that free markets were necessary because he grew up under a communist regime. Varney insisted that “markets work well for everyone.”

The Fox Business host also criticized the pope for mixing politics and religion.

“I go to church to save my soul,” Varney said. “It’s got nothing to do with my vote. Pope Francis has linked the two. He has offered direct criticism of a specific political system. He has characterized negatively that system. I think he wants to influence my politics.”

Pope John Paul II condemned communism and defended private property rights in no uncertain terms. But he denied the fall of communism left capitalism as the “victorious social system.”

“The Marxist solution has failed, but the realities of marginalization and exploitation remain in the world, especially the Third World, as does the reality of human alienation, especially in the more advanced countries,” he wrote in Centesimus Annus. “Indeed, there is a risk that a radical capitalistic ideology could spread which refuses even to consider these problems, in the a priori belief that any attempt to solve them is doomed to failure, and which blindly entrusts their solution to the free development of market forces.”

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