The Spark

the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist

“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx

“People’s Pope” or Just Another Politician?

Sep 28, 2015

The media has been publicizing Pope Francis’s visit to the U.S. with big headlines and a lot of prime-time coverage, emphasizing his words about poverty, immigration and the destruction of the environment.

Yes, poverty, migration and pollution are big problems humanity is facing today–and they are caused directly by the capitalist system’s drive for profit, causing human misery.

So when thousands of people, including many working-class people directly affected by these problems, came to greet Pope Francis, did he tell them to take on the capitalist system? No, he didn’t do that. Instead, he called on the politicians in the U.S. Congress to solve these problems.

That’s the same Congress that has helped pour trillions of dollars into the coffers of big banks and corporations, while refusing to help the working-class families that have lost their homes and livelihoods in the “Great Recession”–which was caused by the big banks and corporations in the first place! The same Congress that has always supported, and amply funded, every war, every act of aggression perpetrated by the U.S. government in the rest of the world! The same Congress that refuses to bring criminal charges against big corporations for violating all kinds of environmental and safety regulations, killing and poisoning millions of people in the name of profit!

In addressing the U.S. Congress, that big, staunch defender of the capitalist system, the Pope clearly demonstrated his own full support of the capitalist system.

But nothing else could be expected from the head of the Catholic hierarchy, an organization that has, for many centuries, defended a social system that divides the population into rich and poor, by preaching to the poor to wait for justice–until after death!

No, Pope Francis is no different than all those politicians who tell the poor they are with them, only to help stabilize and maintain the capitalist world order that condemns millions of people to poverty.

The workers of the world, regardless of their national, ethnic, racial or religious background, are part of the same social class, the working class. And the working class will solve the big problems it’s facing only if it’s able to overcome these divisions; if it’s able to act together to overthrow capitalism–and replace it with a system that the working class will run in its own interests.