Francis: The relevant Pope

“Some people 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,” Francis wrote in the papal statement. “This opinion, which has never been confirmed by the facts, expresses a crude and naive trust in the goodness of those wielding economic power and in the sacralized workings of the prevailing economic system.” “Meanwhile,” he added, “the excluded are still waiting.”from Washington Post on Pope Francis
...
While the earnings of a minority are growing exponentially, so too is the gap separating the majority from the prosperity enjoyed by those happy few. This imbalance is the result of ideologies which defend the absolute autonomy of the marketplace and financial speculation. Consequently, they reject the right of states, charged with vigilance for the common  good to exercise any form of control.  A new tyranny is thus born, invisible and often virutal, which unilaterally and relentlessly imposes its own laws and and rules...
 from Pope Francis Evangelii Gaudium 11/24/2013

[emphasis on both quotes is my own]
 
If Pope Francis gets any more relevant, I might just decide to return to mass... To be honest, I've always seen Marxism as a direct descendant of the philosophy of Jesus Christ.  There's never been much difference, at a spiritual level, between my sixth grade reading of The Communist Manifesto and my ninth grade reading of the Biography of St. Francis. I have always thought that it was no accident that the father of at least half of the world's economic systems had a (converted) Lutheran father himself. Corporate Capitalism, always the scourge of justice, fair trade, and  the redistribution of wealth is rightfully the antithesis of Christian theology.

"Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.” Indeed. Or perhaps with a more secular modernization: "A society of 7B, many who live in painful poverty and hunger, is a catastrophe."