When Pope Francis was elected five years ago, he announced that he wanted to build a “poor Church for the poor”. At the Synod on Youth taking place this month in Rome, a different kind of Church is coming into being: one that caters to the bourgeoisie.
Journalists often suggest that the election of an Argentine pope has perforce put the Church in touch with the world’s poor. But this is misleading. For the first twenty-five years of Pope Francis’ life, Argentina had a higher per-capita GDP than Japan, Italy, and Austria. Poland, the home of St. John Paul II, is still a poorer country than Argentina. So is conservative Hungary.
