We have here a case of understanding what Pope Francis says better than he does

The author is a British academic with a keen interest in economic inequality:

Martin O’Neill is a senior lecturer in politics at the University of York and a co-editor of “Property-Owning Democracy: Rawls and Beyond” (paperback edition, Wiley-Blackwell, 2014). He is currently a research fellow at the Institute for New Economic Thinking, working on a project about the significance of inequality.

He sees Francis embracing not only “radical green” but hard-left economic solutions:

Pope Francis’ new encyclical [Laudato Si,
June 18] is making headlines mainly because of the tough line it takes on climate change, and its message to Catholics and others that they must embrace radical green solutions to society’s problems.

But the Pope’s ecological message is only part of his radical political agenda. Just as significant as his environmental message is a parallel progressive economic agenda that fundamentally rejects deregulated free-market capitalism.

The Pope has a bracing message for Christians and other “people of good will”: that the time has come to move beyond right-wing economics, and to embrace a different kind of economic system.

The papal explainers who play Francis’s radicalism down in favor of his mainly giving spiritual more or less generic advice should tell this fellow how wrong he is.

On the other hand, there’s this other annoying aspect: where is this deregulated capitalism Francis and this radical professor are talking about? Not in this country, where regulations are a constant bone of contention.