s social doctrine. Limbaugh described the pope's economics as "pure Marxism" . "The ideology of Marxism is wrong. But I have met many Marxists in my life who are good people, so I don't feel offended," Francis was quoted as saying. Defending his criticism of the "trickle-down" theory of economics, he added: "There was the promise that once the glass had become full it would overflow and the poor would...
s efforts to clean up its financial institutions were welcomed in a report by a Council of Europe body, published on Thursday. But the authors expressed surprise that the Holy See's regulators had not done full inspections of the Vatican bank or of the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See, which manages the papacy's assets. Both groups were embroiled in scandal this year when Italian...
s "day of peace". The pope, who said in the first peace message of his pontificate that huge salaries and bonuses were symptoms of an economy based on greed and inequality, said: "The grave financial and economic crises of the present time … have pushed man to seek satisfaction, happiness and security in consumption and earnings out of all proportion to the principles of a sound economy. "The succession...
s National Secular Society branding it "a brazen failure". "Many will be disappointed and surprised by this slap in the face to the tens if not hundreds of thousands of suffering victims and to a United Nations body," he said in a statement. "It is both shameless and unacceptable for [the Holy See] to undermine the UN's efforts, made in the interest of protecting past and future victims, by refusing...
s 1455 Gutenberg Bible and aims to put 1.5m pages online Some of the rarest and most fragile religious texts in the Vatican and Bodleian libraries, including ancient bibles and some of the oldest Hebrew manuscript and printed books, are being placed online in a joint project by the two great libraries, which will eventually create an online archive of 1.5m pages. The website launched on Tuesday with...
Magna Carta' of reforms attacking centralisation and urging an end to exclusion and inequality Pope Francis has hit out at the "excessive centralisation" of the Catholic church and railed against what he described as a murderous "economy of exclusion and inequality" in a wide-ranging document likened by one Vatican observer to a "Magna Carta for church reform". Criticising everything from defeatist...