Today I read with some care the Pope’s pastoral letter. It is worse than I thought. Much has been said about the Pope’s ignorance of elementary economics (see here, here, and here.) But hidden in the letter is this other gem:

This imbalance [of income] is the result of ideologies which defend the absolute autonomy of the marketplace and financial speculation. Consequently, they reject the right of states, charged with vigilance for the common good, to exercise any form of control.

The Pope believes, then, that poverty is caused by international institutions, mostly controlled by rich countries.

The literature refuting this idea is so vast and conclusive that I do not wish to insult our readers’ intelligence by providing quotes. The verdict of (serious) development economists is blunt: world poverty and most other social ills are homegrown. They are caused in great part by bad governance, that is, the predatory behavior of local elites. (Yes, rich countries aggravate the problem –not by trading too much as the Pope thinks, but by placing unreasonable restrictions on trade and immigration.)

So, Your Holiness, what you call “states charged with the vigilance of the common good” are, for the most part, criminal enterprises. And their “rights” are no more than the prerogatives they claim to continue stealing from their people. If anything, the globalization you decry has moderated the nefarious influence of bad governance.

I had some hope for this Pope, in part on the irrational grounds of fellow citizenship. Unfortunately, it is not to be.