The recent media flurry over Pope Francis' Encyclical on the environment, Laudato Si', appears to have missed his major thrust, which happens to connect strongly with Regenerative Capitalism. Most reviews highlight Francis' concern about global warming or his Integral Ecology - the manifold connections between the natural world, economics, society, and politics. Yet, while attention to such relationships is laudable, this focus has already received considerable notice in the academic and professional literature. Other analysts point to his critique of unfettered capitalism, yet this too is nothing new - Catholic Social Teaching has criticized unrestrained capitalism since Pope Leo XIII's Rerum Novarum in 1891.

 

Instead, the radical thrust of this document relates strongly to Jorge Bergoglio's choice of name as Bishop of Rome - Francis, as in St. Francis of Assisi, the Saint who championed the poor and outcast, and preached that poverty often was the road to deepest spirituality. Pope Francis channels the Saint in his opening section, citing Francis' "refusal to turn reality into an object simply to be used and controlled" [paragraph 11] and relates how Francis always made sure that a part of the friary garden was to be left to God's plants and creatures. He shows his awareness of the complex ties between the health of the natural and human worlds and the workings of finance and monetary policy by noting that "whatever is fragile, like the environment, is defenseless before the interests of a deified market, which becomes the only rule" [56], adding that the "Economic and financial sectors, being transitional, tend to prevail over the political" [175]. He argues that the "undifferentiated and one-dimensional paradigm" [106] of economics in which "the maximization of profits ... reflects a misunderstanding of the very concept of the economy" [195]. He regrets that "Finance overwhelms the real economy" [109] - these days by a factor greater than 50:1  [1].  Yet, Pope Francis reveals his hand most openly in Chapter 5 when he makes what might be his most counter-cultural statement...

One man came to business through Wall Street. Another through a California mountaineering company with surfer employees. Yet both arrived at the realization tha t the business model of the future needs to cooperate with nature, respect life, and serve people.