Ciro Fusco/EPA
Pope Francis no Canada
The right to private property: absolute, untouchable, natural right to man? Francis updated the doctrine of Leo XIII.
Encyclical Letter of Pope Leo XIIIabout the condition of the workers; May 15, 1891. “Private and personal property is, for man, of natural law.”
Encyclical Letter of Papa Franciscoabout the care of the common house; May 24, 2015. “Christian tradition has never recognized the right to private property as absolute or untouchable.”
Then a Private propriety Is it a natural right to man, or has never been recognized by Christian tradition?
A apparent contradiction Between two popes, in encyclical letters over 100 years of difference between them.
It is a subject we recover now, as there seemed to be a confrontation between Pope Francis and Pope Leo XIII – when now the successor of Francis is Leo XIV.
But, as always, you should read everything. And when reading the two encyclicals completely, it appears that there is no confrontation, as the Archbishop Julio Endi Akamine said.
Leo XIII was against the “socialists” who defended the end of private property. They were people who “want all ownership of private goods to be suppressed, that the goods of an individual should be common to all, and that their administration must return to municipalities or to the state.” And he warned that the workers would be harmed, could stay in misery.
Pope Leo XIII argued that private property makes the individual free and independent; The right to property was an important foundation for the freedom of citizens. It was the basis of a democratic economy: each one participates in the income of the economic circuit on the base of private property.
For Leo XIII, private property should serve the common good.
Now Pope Francis. It is true that Christian tradition “never recognized the right to private property as absolute or untouchable”, but also wrote what was following: Christian tradition “stressed the social function of any form of private property. The principle of common use of goods created for all is the first principle of all ethical-social order (Laborem Exercises, 19), is a natural, primordial and priority right. ”
“All other rights to the goods necessary for the full realization of people, whatever they are, including that of private property, should not prevent, but, on the contrary, facilitate their realization.”
Francisco, after all, also believed that the right to property was natural; And followed the words of Leo XIII: in the use of private goods, the owner must make others participate in these goods, in his needs.
For Francisco, Who has private goods, should put them in the service of the common good.
That is: the Pope Francis updated the doctrine of Pope Leo XIII.
The Church’s social doctrine defends the right to individual property and the universal destiny of goods.
