Pope Francis’ Economic Legacy
Pope Francis leaves behind an incredible legacy.
While there are various categories to analyze such as his attempted Synod and devotion to the poor, it is worth exploring his contribution to economics.
He sought to infuse the Catholic perspective into modern questions of materialism. Rarely, did he shy away from appearing to step outside his lane and challenging us imperfect humans to live up to a higher ideal rooted in the Catholic faith.
In 2015, Pope Francis published his Laudato Si’ encyclical which expanded on his perspective of how Catholicism should inform a common good economics. In it, he referenced Church teaching and past Popes to formulate a Catholic point of view on economic matters. His thesis described the degradation of the environment and human culture as connected.
As Pope Francis wrote: “Both are ultimately due to the same evil: the notion that there are no indisputable truths to guide our lives, and hence human freedom is limitless.” Freedom has a very specific meaning within Catholicism. Pope Francis referenced the works of Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI that defined the Church’s approach to the concept of freedom. Although not directly cited by Pope Francis, Pope John Paul II’s book Memory and Identity aligned with Francis’ sentiments.
Pope John Paul II wrote: “Freedom is given to man by the Creator as a gift and at the same time as a task. Through freedom, man is called to accept and to implement the truth regarding the good.
“In choosing and bringing about a genuine good in personal and family life, in the economic and political sphere, in national and international arenas, man brings about his own freedom in the truth.
“This allows him to escape or to overcome possible deviations recorded by history…Freedom is properly so called to the extent that it implements the truth regarding the good. Only then does it become a good in itself. If freedom ceases to be linked with truth and begins to make truth dependent on freedom, it sets the premises for dangerous moral consequences, which can assume incalculable dimensions.”
Pope Francis directly referenced Pope Benedict when he said: “Where we ourselves have the final word, where everything is simply our property and we use it for ourselves alone. The misuse of creation begins when we no longer recognize any higher instance than ourselves, when we see nothing else but ourselves.”
Taken altogether, the message is that our individual and collective actions can only be defined as good if they are informed by and conform to truth independent of human small mindedness and infallibility. Rather than a constraint, this understanding is the only way humans can truly flourish. In terms of a metaphor, music is only good in its conformity to the rules of music theory. There's no way to make an off note sound good; there’s no way to make an orchestra all playing in different tunings, keys, and songs sound good.
Is it not obvious then that the truth that produces harmony in music is the same truth that produces harmony in society?
The recognition and acceptance of the indisputable truth of music theory does not diminish the diversity of expression. Musicians take theory to assemble different songs and compositions together. They could have one instrument or many. They could be emotionally sad or happy. They could be simple or complex. No matter the genre, a rocker in a Michigan garage band and a classical violinist in a Viennese orchestra adhere to the same indisputable truth of music theory. Yet no one would ever accuse them of acting within the tight confines of a totalitarian perspective where everything is the same and sterile. It is just the opposite.
Pope Francis wanted humanity to re-embrace a musical theory of society. If not, we only perpetuate disharmony and delude ourselves into thinking that our discord is the truth. As he wrote: “We fail to see the deepest roots of our present failures, which have to do with the direction, goals, meaning and social implications of technological and economic growth.” We may point to economic growth as good but that growth could be full of off notes.
Was that growth achieved through fair labor and trade or oppression and exploitation?
Was that growth justly shared to those who contributed to it or exclusively hoarded by oligarchs?
Was that growth substantive and healthy or did its illusion leave our societies hollowed out and weaker?
Pope Francis specified that, “Finance overwhelms the real economy…To ensure economic freedom from which all can effectively benefit, restraints occasionally have to be imposed on those possessing greater resources and financial power. To claim economic freedom while real conditions bar many people from actual access to it, and while possibilities for employment continue to shrink, is to practise a doublespeak which brings politics into disrepute. Business is a noble vocation, directed to producing wealth and improving our world. It can be a fruitful source of prosperity for the areas in which it operates, especially if it sees the creation of jobs as an essential part of its service to the common good.”
The “common good” is frequently used as a descriptor for Pope Francis’ economic perspective. In it we see a celebration of business and entrepreneurship but also the emphasis on responsibility. His separation of finance from the real economy indicates an acknowledgement that our modern financialized economics is often divorced from fair and just production of real wealth and goods. Rather it is often focused on the parasitization of past societal prosperity. He warned of a similar dynamic with “technocracy” as well.
As he described it, “The basic problem goes even deeper: it is the way that humanity has taken up technology and its development according to an undifferentiated and one-dimensional paradigm.
“This paradigm exalts the concept of a subject who, using logical and rational procedures, progressively approaches and gains control over an external object…It can be said that many problems of today’s world stem from the tendency, at times unconscious, to make the method and aims of science and technology an epistemological paradigm which shapes the lives of individuals and the workings of society.
“The effects of imposing this model on reality as a whole, human and social, are seen in the deterioration of the environment, but this is just one sign of a reductionism which affects every aspect of human and social life. We have to accept that technological products are not neutral, for they create a framework which ends up conditioning lifestyles and shaping social possibilities along the lines dictated by the interests of certain powerful groups. Decisions which may seem purely instrumental are in reality decisions about the kind of society we want to build.”
While ultimately pointed at a transcendent ideal, these messages also contain the practical wisdom that societies, and especially its elites, which don’t act towards the common good will reap what they sow in second and third order consequences. A society that doesn’t act with the common good is not long to last. Pope Francis connected both modernity’s prioritization of finance and technocracy in this conclusion that, “Politics must not be subject to the economy, nor should the economy be subject to the dictates of an efficiency-driven paradigm of technocracy.
“Today, in view of the common good, there is urgent need for politics and economics to enter into a frank dialogue in the service of life, especially human life. Saving banks at any cost, making the public pay the price, foregoing a firm commitment to reviewing and reforming the entire system, only reaffirms the absolute power of a financial system, a power which has no future and will only give rise to new crises after a slow, costly and only apparent recovery.”
Pope Francis’ message was not just reliant on his own thoughts or those of the most recent Popes but also more traditional sources. In a separate address in 2015, Pope Francis alluded to Pope Leo XIII’s 1891 Rerum Novarum encyclical. Georgetown University called the 1891 encyclical “A foundation text in the history of Catholic social thought.” In the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishop’s Foundational Documents of [Catholic Social Teaching] CST webpage, it is listed as the first primary source document.
Pope Leo XIII’s motivation for the work can be found in the first paragraphs. He wrote that, “Remedy must be found quickly for the misery and wretchedness pressing so unjustly on the majority of the working class: for the ancient workingmen's guilds were abolished in the last century, and no other protective organization took their place. Public institutions and the laws set aside the ancient religion. Hence, by degrees it has come to pass that working men have been surrendered, isolated and helpless, to the hardheartedness of employers and the greed of unchecked competition. The mischief has been increased by rapacious usury, which, although more than once condemned by the Church, is nevertheless, under a different guise, but with like injustice, still practiced by covetous and grasping men. To this must be added that the hiring of labor and the conduct of trade are concentrated in the hands of comparatively few; so that a small number of very rich men have been able to lay upon the teeming masses of the laboring poor a yoke little better than that of slavery itself.”
Pope Leo XIII saw the modern world corroding itself and stimulating a terrible reaction. He was also, if not more so, critical of socialism. He deplored the class conflict endemic to it. He was emphatically against the destruction of private property which, as he saw it, was rooted in Catholic understanding. Ultimately, he saw socialism as against nature and the truth. With that being said, he did not go easy on those capitalists who neglected the truth to such an extreme irresponsible extent that enabled the fermentation of socialism.
He wrote: “They are reminded that, according to natural reason and Christian philosophy, working for gain is creditable, not shameful, to a man, since it enables him to earn an honorable livelihood; but to misuse men as though they were things in the pursuit of gain, or to value them solely for their physical powers - that is truly shameful and inhuman.
"Again justice demands that, in dealing with the working man, religion and the good of his soul must be kept in mind. Hence, the employer is bound to see that the worker has time for his religious duties; that he be not exposed to corrupting influences and dangerous occasions; and that he be not led away to neglect his home and family, or to squander his earnings. Furthermore, the employer must never tax his work people beyond their strength, or employ them in work unsuited to their sex and age. His great and principal duty is to give every one what is just. Doubtless, before deciding whether wages axe fair, many things have to be considered; but wealthy owners and all masters of labor should be mindful of this - that to exercise pressure upon the indigent and the destitute for the sake of gain, and to gather one's profit out of the need of another, is condemned by all laws, human and divine.
"To defraud any one of wages that are his due is a great crime which cries to the avenging anger of Heaven…Lastly, the rich must religiously refrain from cutting down the workmen's earnings, whether by force, by fraud, or by usurious dealing; and with all the greater reason because the laboring man is, as a rule, weak and unprotected, and because his slender means should in proportion to their scantiness be accounted sacred. Were these precepts carefully obeyed and followed out, would they not be sufficient of themselves to keep under all strife and all its causes?...Therefore, those whom fortune favors are warned that riches do not bring freedom from sorrow and are of no avail for eternal happiness, but rather are obstacles;(9) that the rich should tremble at the threatenings of Jesus Christ - threatenings so unwonted in the mouth of our Lord(10) - and that a most strict account must be given to the Supreme Judge for all we possess.
"The chief and most excellent rule for the right use of money is one the heathen philosophers hinted at, but which the Church has traced out clearly, and has not only made known to men's minds, but has impressed upon their lives. It rests on the principle that it is one thing to have a right to the possession of money and another to have a right to use money as one wills. Private ownership, as we have seen, is the natural right of man, and to exercise that right, especially as members of society, is not only lawful, but absolutely necessary. "It is lawful," says St. Thomas Aquinas, "for a man to hold private property; and it is also necessary for the carrying on of human existence."" But if the question be asked: How must one's possessions be used? - the Church replies without hesitation in the words of the same holy Doctor: "Man should not consider his material possessions as his own, but as common to all, so as to share them without hesitation when others are in need.”
We come full circle back to Pope Francis’ common good economics. We see a throughline from St. Thomas Aquinas to Pope Leo XIII to Pope John Paul II to Pope Benedict and finally Pope Francis. Thus, Pope Francis’ economic legacy should be understood as not an innovation or importation of modern secular thinking into Catholicism but instead a reinvigoration of traditional Catholic social teaching. This teaching commands us to use freedom in conformity with the truth to produce the good. The “free” of free market capitalism can only be good if it's in conformity with the truth. Without this, the “free” descriptor becomes deceptive in conflating the good without the underlying connection to the truth. This is what can be interpreted as Pope John Paul II’s warning on “the risk of an "idolatry" of the market” from his 1991 Centesimus Annus encyclical which Pope Francis cited in his 2016 Address Of His Holiness Pope Francis To Participants In The International Conference Of The Christian Union Of The Business Executives (UNIAPAC).
As Pope John Paul II wrote in that same encyclical: “Can it perhaps be said that, after the failure of Communism, capitalism is the victorious social system, and that capitalism should be the goal of the countries now making efforts to rebuild their economy and society? Is this the model which ought to be proposed to the countries of the Third World which are searching for the path to true economic and civil progress? The answer is obviously complex. If by "capitalism" is meant an economic system which recognizes the fundamental and positive role of business, the market, private property and the resulting responsibility for the means of production, as well as free human creativity in the economic sector, then the answer is certainly in the affirmative, even though it would perhaps be more appropriate to speak of a "business economy", "market economy" or simply "free economy". But if by "capitalism" is meant a system in which freedom in the economic sector is not circumscribed within a strong juridical framework which places it at the service of human freedom in its totality, and which sees it as a particular aspect of that freedom, the core of which is ethical and religious, then the reply is certainly negative.”
Hence, we should not be led astray by delusions of freedom which are really just a mask for irresponsibility. This irresponsibility only nurtures reactionary chaos rather than prosperity. Instead, Catholic teaching holds that we are called upon to organize our economic systems in accordance with the truth to produce the common good. As Pope Francis wrote, “Let us keep in mind the principle of subsidiarity, which grants freedom to develop the capabilities present at every level of society, while also demanding a greater sense of responsibility for the common good from those who wield greater power.”
This reinvigoration of the traditional Catholic perspective is Pope Francis’ economic legacy.
Originally published in The Eriugena Review on 1 May 2025.