page_title: Pope Francis
section_title: Poverty
hierarchical_section_title: Pope Francis / Teachings / Poverty
caption_attribution_description: English: Pope Francis at Varginha
context_page_description: Pope Francis is the head of the Catholic Church and sovereign of the Vatican City State. Francis is the first Jesuit pope, the first from the Americas, the first from the Southern Hemisphere, and the first pope from outside Europe since the Syrian Gregory III, who reigned in the 8th century. He is also the first Pope since Gregory XVI to have been a priest of a religious order.
  Born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Bergoglio was ordained a Catholic priest in 1969, and from 1973 to 1979 was Argentina's provincial superior of the Society of Jesus. He became the archbishop of Buenos Aires in 1998 and was created a cardinal in 2001 by Pope John Paul II. He led the Argentine Church during the December 2001 riots in Argentina. The administrations of Néstor Kirchner and Cristina Fernández de Kirchner considered him a political rival. Following the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI on 28 February 2013, a papal conclave elected Bergoglio as his successor on 13 March. He chose Francis as his papal name in honor of Saint Francis of Assisi.
context_section_description: While he has said that the greatest poverty is "the lack of Christ," and the "only one real kind of poverty" is "not living as children of God and brothers and sisters in Christ", Francis has also been very outspoken against material poverty. At a meeting of Latin American bishops in 2007, Bergoglio said that, despite the economic growth, poverty had not been reduced in the continent, and asked for a better income distribution. On 30 September 2009, Bergoglio spoke at a conference organized by the Argentina City Postgraduate School (EPOCA) at the Alvear Palace Hotel in which he quoted the 1992 "Documento de Santo Domingo" by the Latin American Episcopal Conference, saying "extreme poverty and unjust economic structures that cause great inequalities" are violations of human rights. He went on to describe social debt as "immoral, unjust, and illegitimate".
  During a 48-hour public servant strike in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Bergoglio criticized unequal treatment of the judiciary to poor and rich people. In 2002, during an economic crisis, Bergoglio harshly criticized those in power, saying, "[l]et's not tolerate the sad spectacle of those who no longer know how to lie and contradict themselves to hold onto their privileges, their rapaciousness, and their ill-earned wealth". During a May 2010 Mass celebrated by twenty bishops commemorating the Argentina Bicentennial in front of the basilica of Luján, an important Catholic institution and destination of pilgrimage, Bergoglio criticized the reduced social concern over poverty and exhorted Catholics to ask the Virgin of Luján to "take care of our motherland, particularly those who are most forgotten". In line with the Catholic Church's efforts to care for AIDS victims, in 2001 he visited a hospice where he washed and kissed the feet of twelve AIDS patients. Pope Francis spoke out over the collapse of Rana Plaza garment factory in April 2013, which killed over a thousand people, and condemned the low pay workers received.
  Pope Francis urged world leaders to prevent excessive monetary ambitions, which he said had become similar to an idolatry of money, and urged them to provide more welfare aid. Dealing with the Great Recession, the pope criticized unbridled capitalism, considering that it judged human beings purely by their ability to consume goods and made people miserable. He said that social inequality and increasing poverty is caused by neoliberalism, and preferred economic systems with a higher intervention by the state. During a May 2014 meeting with U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, Francis called on the United Nations to encourage a better income distribution. In 2015, he declared that the poor and downtrodden of the world should have "sacred rights" of labor, lodging, and land, and denounced the austerity imposed by global financial institutions, referring to it as the "new colonialism".
  Pope Francis deplores modern slavery and, together with a diverse group of leaders from other religions, he signed a declaration promising to inspire action worldwide in an effort to eliminate slavery by 2020. Both Pope Francis and the declaration described slavery as a crime against humanity. During his new year mass in 2015 Francis pressed people from all cultures and religions to combat human trafficking and modern slavery according to their responsibilities. Francis said all human beings are brothers and sisters and all have a right to be free.
  Chancellor of Germany Angela Merkel consulted Francis on 18 May 2013, and later the same day called for more stringent controls of financial markets. Francis has referred many times to the Eurozone crisis that affect Greece and Catholic Southern European nations. Nevertheless, Pope Francis considers that starvation and homeless people are bigger problems than the financial crises. George Haley of New Haven University said that Francis thinks that capitalism should reduce income disparity, and proposed that he used the diplomatic influence of the Vatican to suggest changes in national economies. Rohit Arora is concerned that Francis has not c
caption: Pope Francis visits a favela in Brazil during World Youth Day 2013
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