RUSH: The pope, ladies and gentlemen, is back saying, demanding a legitimate redistribution of wealth. Il Papa, Pope Francis, “called Friday for governments to redistribute wealth to the poor in a new spirit of generosity to help curb the ‘economy of exclusion’ that is taking hold today.”

The pope is describing charity, and that’s what the church is for. And the Vatican is a country. But the pope is demanding that the United Nations somehow use it’s influence to get member states to redistribute wealth. That’s Marxism. That’s socialism. That’s not charity. The church is the place where that kind of thing, charity, should come from. And he is in charge of that. And the Catholic Church, how many billion — (interruption) What? You think I’m getting in trouble here? (interruption) What have I said that isn’t true? What have I said that’s politically incorrect besides all of it?

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Now, I want to go back this pope story. There’s a couple of interesting paragraphs here in the AP story, and we have to allow they could be totally wrong and incorrect because it is the AP. However, the pope is singing the AP’s tune here, so it could be pretty accurate.

One paragraph is: “Francis had a similar message to the World Economic Forum in January and in h is apostolic exhortation ‘The Joy of the Gospel.’ That document, which denounced trickle-down economic theories as unproven and naive, provoked criticism in the U.S. that he was Marxist.”

I wonder who said that? It doesn’t say. But trickle-down economic theories are proven, they are not naive, they happen to work, and it is the essence of economic growth. Trickle-down is exactly what happens in a vibrant economy. Anyway, “Francis urged the UN to promote development goals that attack the root causes of poverty and hunger, protect the environment and ensure dignified labor for all.”

The UN is one of the root causes of poverty, if you want to get down to brass tacks. The UN wouldn’t know how to properly identify the root cause of poverty if it had to because the root cause of poverty is the isms: socialism, communism, Marxism, liberalism, you name it. You want everybody to be poor, that’s what you do. Take a look at Venezuela. Now they’re rationing everything. This paradise, workers paradise, nationalized all those industries, took over all the oil companies, nationalized this, nationalized that, Hugo Chavez. Now he’s room temperature, but the country is just a basket case.

It was supposed to be to a socialist utopia paradise. Now everything is being rationed. Water, food, electricity, is all being rationed. That’s exactly what happens. There’s your root cause of poverty. The pope said, “Specifically,” getting to the root cause of poverty,
protecting the environment, “this involves challenging all forms of injustices and resisting the economy of exclusion, the throwaway culture and the culture of death which nowadays sadly risk becoming passively accepted.” That’s abortion, that’s not going to sit well, but he may have covered his bases elsewhere.

Then there’s this. “Friday’s audience came just days after the Holy See was battered in a second round of grilling by a UN committee over its record of handling priestly sex abuse.” A-ha. So only days after the church was ripped to shreds for the priests and the sex abuse of children, we get this. I’m just gonna tell you, redistributing wealth is not charity. That’s why a lot of people sign on for it, they think it is. But it isn’t. It’s income redistribution. It is generational theft. Charity is an entirely different thing.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH Okay. They’re trying to say the pope didn’t say what he said.

‘Redistribution of Wealth’ is a Marxist concept. Francis is calling for economic opportunity for all, avoiding ‘exclusionary’ policies.

— Fr. Jonathan Morris (@fatherjonathan) May 9, 2014

Father Jonathan Morris, who I think appears on Fox, has tweeted, “Bad reporting by many. Pope Francis didn’t tell nations to redistribute wealth. He said legitimate redistribution of economic benefits.” Deep doo-doo again over there, trying to talk this back.