Pope Francis arrived on American soil this afternoon, greeted at Joint Base Andrews by the First Family and much fanfare.

He was also greeted with much consternation over his economic world view.

The Stream‘s Executive Editor Jay Richards, who doubles as a professor at Catholic University, was part of a Fox Business Network panel debating the Pope’s economic vision upon his arrival from Cuba. Richards said:

He’s going to see a marked contrast between this remaining communist country here off our East Coast and the United States, which despite some degrading economic news is pretty high up on the Index of Economic Freedom.

Earlier, in an op-ed for Fox News, Richards admitted some of Pope Francis’s economic claims are “bewildering to Catholics like me who believe economic freedom is the best-known way to alleviate widespread poverty.”

In his 2013 apostolic letter, Evangelii Gaudium, he took a shot at Adam Smith: “We can no longer trust in the unseen forces and the invisible hand of the market.” He condemned “the absolute autonomy of markets.” He criticized those who “continue to defend trickle-down theories which assume that economic growth, encouraged by a free market, will inevitably succeed in bringing about greater justice and inclusiveness in the world.”

The Pope also denounced, “an economy of exclusion,” “a financial system which rules rather than serves,” and an “inequality which spawns violence.”

However, Richards points out, Pope Francis is describing not free markets, not capitalism, but “the corporatist economy of the Holy Father’s native Argentina,” which was wrecked by the rule of Juan Peron and which today ranks 169 out of 178 on the 2015 Index of Economic Freedom.

The environment is another area Richards believes capitalism will better serve the pontiff’s goals than the state-based solutions that the pope seemed to favor in the papal encyclical Laudato Si. As Richards told Fox Business Network:

There is this thing called the Environmental Kuznets Curve, and what happens is you get a country where the per capita income gets to a certain level people are actually willing to bear the cost of environmental clean-up. So that is why the air in the United States is, of course, much cleaner than it is in China or even as it is in the former Soviet Union.

Ultimately, Richards is optimistic about the Pope’s visit.

My hope is that he’ll see some of the bright side of both capitalism and American life, and we will hear what he is here to say. Because his message is not primarily political or economic. He is a preacher of the gospel and I hope he has the chance to articulate that. Now, if the media will do it’s part to emphasize this.

 

Please stay with The Stream for continued coverage of Pope Francis’s historic visit to the United States.