Dear Pope Francis,

Congrats on getting the big gig.

You will have seen that, more than ever, these savagely greedy times call for the BIG ONE.

I trust you have the intestinal fortitude.

In Cura Pastoralis Pope Gregory the Great (540-604) was prepared to put it boldly and succinctly:-

Those who make private property of the gift of God pretend in vain to be innocent. For, in thus retaining the subsistence of the poor, they are the murderers of those who die every day for the want of it.

But Pope Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum tried to obfuscate. Of course land can be bought and sold, it declared: it’s quite OK to buy and sell anything with honestly-earned money. Henry George politely reminded Leo this argument also re-justifies chattel slavery.

Hoping you can do better, Francis.  It would provide necessary assistance to one of your Jesuitical colleagues who tries in vain to assist Australia’s indigenous people.

Yours faithfully,