[In This Economy] Visiting Pope Francis, reviewing his take on global issues

Last week, totally by chance, my friends and I flew to Rome a day after it was announced that Pope Francis had died.

We visited St. Peter’s Square on the night of our arrival, and also on the next day just to see the huge throng of people going to St. Peter’s Basilica to give their final respects to Pope Francis. True enough, people lined up for hours just to get in.

I told my Rappler editors about my chance visit, and they encouraged me to take photos and videos to capture the moment. I even got to interview Aida Obligado, an overseas Filipino worker living in Rome, who visited with her five friends and were readying to line up. Aida told me she thought Pope Francis was kind, great, and very helpful to the poor. She was also excited by the prospects of having a Filipino pope.

On the last day of the public visitation, I lined up for two hours to pay my respects. It was an opportunity of a lifetime. Security was tight (we went through two security checks) but the lines were easier than I expected. Notably, Pope Francis’ remains were in a plain open casket and not elevated on a bier. He also chose to be buried in the relatively less-known Papal Basilica of St. Mary Major (which we also got to visit). In many ways, Pope Francis deviated from previous popes.

I’ve only known three popes during my lifetime, but to me Pope Francis stood out as a radical pope and a truly 21^st-century pope. Not only did he connect well with the masses (I recall the time he visited Tacloban City in 2015, in the wake of Super Typhoon Yolanda), but he also didn’t shy away from statements about pressing global issues in the 21^st century — including those related to economics.

As early as 2013, soon after being elected by the conclave, Pope Francis critiqued neoliberalism and trickle-down economics, smashing the idea that economic growth by itself can reduce inequality. He said: “This opinion, which has never been confirmed by the facts, expresses a crude and naïve trust in the goodness of those wielding economic power and in the sacralized workings of the prevailing economic system. Meanwhile, the excluded are still waiting.”

Indeed, the notion of trickle-down economics — or the notion that tax cuts for the rich can boost economies — has been thoroughly debunked in economics. These days you’re much more likely to see economists sympathetic to wealth taxes or other similar policies aimed at reducing gross income inequality.

Pope Francis doubled down on this point in his epic 2015 encyclical, Laudato Si’. He said, “By itself the market cannot guarantee integral human development and social inclusion.” This is a point he would repeat many times in future statements, and I couldn’t agree more. 

Today you’ll be hard-pressed to find market fundamentalists among serious economists. For decades now, economists have acknowledged that markets can’t solve all problems. In fact, they create new problems when left to their own devices. There’s always room for government intervention, especially in some contexts, and it’s nice to see a pope who understands this basic notion in modern economics and economic policymaking.  

Pope Francis also offered scathing critiques of the global financial crisis, and the lessons not learned from it. He said: “The financial crisis of 2007-08 provided an opportunity to develop a new economy, more attentive to ethical principles, and new ways of regulating speculative financial practices and virtual wealth. But the response to the crisis did not include rethinking the outdated criteria which continue to rule the world. Production is not always rational, and is usually tied to economic variables which assign to products a value that does not necessarily correspond to their real worth.”

Also in Laudato Si’, Pope Francis issued groundbreaking statements on environmental justice. He said, “The earth’s resources are also being plundered because of short-sighted approaches to the economy, commerce and production.” His call for climate justice shook the world and spoke truth to power, much to the admiration of climate advocates. Among economists, the notion of “doughnut economics” has gained currency: a vision of a global economy that is “both ecologically safe and socially just: a space in which humanity can thrive.”

Related to this, Pope Francis criticized what he called a “throwaway culture” that goes beyond “uncontrolled consumerism” and speaks of an economy that “kills,” in the sense that “Human beings are themselves considered consumer goods to be used and then discarded.” I’m reminded of how thousands of Filipinos were killed and discarded in the name of the Duterte administration’s war on drugs — a policy that hurt our economy in more ways than one.

Then in his 2020 encyclical Fratelli Tutti, Pope Francis exhorted fraternity and social friendship as foundations for a more just and peaceful world. What struck me the most, however, was Pope Francis’ well-argued critique of how poverty is being measured globally.

He said, “The claim that the modern world has reduced poverty is made by measuring poverty with criteria from the past that do not correspond to present-day realities. In other times, for example, lack of access to electric energy was not considered a sign of poverty, nor was it a source of hardship. Poverty must always be understood and gauged in the context of the actual opportunities available in each concrete historical period.”

This statement is totally in line with the movement in development economics that pushes for “multidimensional poverty,” or poverty that looks not just at income gaps but also gaps in education, health, and other non-income measures of standards of living. Today, many countries still measure poverty based just on income, and this tends to greatly understate the extent of poverty experienced by people around the world.

All in all, what stood out for me was Pope Francis’ singular concern for the poor and marginalized. Global poverty is rapidly declining, but this should not desensitize us to the plight of those who continue to experience raw poverty.  In his message for the 2023 World Day of the Poor, Pope Francis said, “I think in particular of peoples caught up in situations of war, and especially children deprived of the serene present and a dignified future. We should never grow accustomed to such situations.”

Economists, I’m proud to say, have done their darndest to understand the roots of poverty and potential solutions. This is the primary goal of the field called development economics, and many innovative studies have led to effective solutions over the years, some of them Nobel Prize-winning.

But wisely, Pope Francis reminds us of the human face of poverty. He said in 2023, “When speaking of the poor, it is easy to fall into rhetorical excess. It is also an insidious temptation to remain at the level of statistics and numbers. The poor are persons; they have faces, stories, hearts and souls. They are our brothers and sisters, with good points and bad, like all of us, and it is important to enter into a personal relation with each of them.” That’s valuable advice for economists seeking concrete ways to abate poverty.

I may not be religious, but Pope Francis’ moral clarity on poverty, inequality, and environmental justice spoke deeply to me — not just as a human being but also as an economist. At times, he might as well have been a 21st-century economist himself, given how incisively he grappled with the world’s most urgent challenges.

Rest in peace, Pope Francis. Your words and wisdom will stay with us for a long time. – Rappler.com

JC Punongbayan, PhD is an assistant professor at the UP School of Economics and the author of False Nostalgia: The Marcos “Golden Age” Myths and How to Debunk Them. In 2024, he received The Outstanding Young Men (TOYM) Award for economics. Follow him on Instagram (@jcpunongbayan) and Usapang Econ Podcast.