Property and Popery – is Pope Francis’s teaching on private property radical?

The importance of private property has been controversial in Catholic social thought and teaching down the ages. The approach of the Catholic Church to the question of property rights has been discussed by a number of Austrian-school authors, though their focus has been on teaching documents from 1891 to 1931. During that period, and up to the mid-1960s, the modern teaching of the Catholic Church on the right to property tended to be extremely positive. Since that time, ambiguities have crept in, and Pope Francis in particular has given the impression of being lukewarm towards the right to property. We discuss whether Pope Francis’s position is radical within the tradition of Catholic social teaching and conclude that it is not especially so, though his emphasis is more negative than that of previous popes and his reasoning not always sound. It is also found that the Catholic Church has left undeveloped the link between private property, economic development and environmental outcomes despite the interest of the Church in poverty and environmental degradation. This, together with the lack of discussion of the exceptions to the general rule of support for private property, is a real omission in Catholic Church teaching.