Pope Francis: Housing and work ‘increasingly unavailable’

Pope Francis has said "land, housing and work are increasingly unavailable to the majority" of the world's population, adding that to express "solidarity" in the modern world means being ready "to fight against the 'empire of money'".

“It is strange, but if I talk like this, there are those who say that the Pope is a communist,” he added.

The Pope was speaking to the participants in the World Meeting of Popular Movements, which is holding a three-day conference in Rome this week, partly organised by the Vatican’s Pontifical Council of Justice and Peace.

Among those attending the conference are the Argentine Excluded Workers Movement, the Brazilian Rural Workers Without Land Movement as well as Bolivian president Evo Morales, present on behalf of the Aymara Indigenous group rather than as head of the Bolivian state.

Speaking to more than 200 delegates in the Apostolic Palace, the Pope said: “Solidarity is a word that means more than some generous, sporadic acts. It is to think and act in terms of the community . . . It is also to fight agains the structural causes of poverty, inequality, unemployment and [loss of] land, housing, social and labour rights. It is to confront the destructive effects of the ‘Empire Of Money’ – namely forcible displacements and migrations, human and drug trafficking, war, violence.”