As the U.S. presidential campaign exposes contempt for elites and angst over the future, Pope Francis arrives for his first visit with plans to denounce gross inequality and planetary neglect.The message, delivered by the spiritual leader of 1.2 billion Roman Catholics during a six-day tour starting on September 22, will doubtless focus U.S. public discourse. Francis, 78, has stamped his humble personality on the papacy and has little time for diplomatic niceties.
Having called money “the devil’s dung” when it enslaves people, he seems likely to rattle politicians and business leaders in a country widely seen as the bastion of capitalism.
“The pope says money is OK, capital is OK, but when money becomes a god, an idol, more important than man, that’s not OK - - whatever people in Wall Street think,” said Andrea Tornielli, author of “This Economy Kills,” on Francis’s economic thinking. ...