I’m not a Marxist, says Pope Francis

Pope Francis and his predicessor

Pope Francis said he knew a lot of “good” Marxists but was no communist himself, following criticism of his diatribes against unfettered capitalism from conservative commentators in the United States.

“Marxist ideology is wrong. But in my life I have met a lot of Marxists who are good people, so I do not feel offended,” Francis said in an interview with the Italian daily La Stampa published on Sunday.


He said his condemnations of the inequality caused by the current global economic system
were not intended to be an expert analysis and were only a reiteration of the social doctrine of the Catholic Church.

“That does not mean being a Marxist,” he said.
Pope Francis who was named Time magazine’s Person of the Year, but he has come under scathing criticism from a growing number of traditionalist Catholics for cracking down on a religious order that celebrates the old Latin Mass. The case has become a flashpoint in the ideological tug-of-war going on in the Catholic Church over Francis’ revolutionary agenda, which has thrilled progressives and alarmed some conservatives.

The matter concerns the Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate, a small but growing order of several hundred priests, seminarians and nuns that was founded in Italy in 1990 as an offshoot of the larger Franciscan order of the pope’s namesake, St. Francis of Assisi.

Then-Pope Benedict XVI launched an investigation into the congregation after five of its priests complained that the order was taking on an overly traditionalist bent, with the old Latin Mass being celebrated more and more at the expense of the liturgy in the vernacular.

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