(ANSA) - ROME, FEBRUARY 26 - "Yes, I do politics. Because everyone must do politics. The Christian people must do politics. When we
read what Jesus said, we see that he was involved in politics. And what is politics? A style of life for the city, for the city. What I don't do, nor should the Church do, is party politics. But the Gospel has a political dimension, which is to convert people's social mentality, even religious".
Pope Francis affirms it in a passage from the new book "El pastor" (The shepherd), to be released in Argentina by journalists Francesca Ambrogetti and Sergio Rubin.
The Pontiff thus responds to those who accuse him of engaging in politics, or, to put it differently, of politicizing the Gospel.
With the new volume, Francesca Ambrogetti, former head of ANSA in Argentina, and Sergio Rubin, of the newspaper El Clarin, return to the figure of Jorge Mario Bergoglio after some time from "The Jesuit", written in 2010 when he was archbishop of Buenos Aires and became a bestseller World Cup in 2013 with his election as Pope.
"My government program is to carry out what the cardinals declared in the general congregations on the eve of the conclave", and therefore revitalize the proclamation of the Gospel, reduce Vatican centralism, ban paedophilia..."And fight economic corruption... I apologize if someone did not realize how it would end", explains the Pope in the text, which ANSA is able to anticipate.
Regarding his criticisms of capitalism, "first of all I specify that everything I say is in the Social Doctrine of the Church", he began.
"I don't condemn capitalism.
Nor am I against the market, but in favor of what John Paul II has defined as a 'social market economy'". Then "I preferentially focus on the poor because that is what Jesus did and what the Gospel says". all agree is that wealth concentration and inequality have increased.
And that there are many people who die of hunger".
In short, wealth "must always be participatory.
If she closes in on herself, it hurts, or at least she is sterile, not fertile". (ANSA).
