Bernie Sanders and Pope Francis Share the Same Spirit of Poverty.

Last updated on: February 23, 2016 at 11:00 pm by Gerard A. Murphy

Bernie Sanders and Pope Francis Share the Same Spirit of Poverty. 2016-02-23T23:00:43-05:00 Gerard A. Murphy

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While Donald Trump sparks with the Vatican over his proposal to build a wall along the US-Mexico border, Bernie Sanders waxes eloquently on the pope’s Spirit of Poverty in a culture of obscene wealth.

In an interview with the Canadian Catholic television network Salt + Light , Sanders, a self-styled democratic socialist, said he believes Francis shares the same ideology because the pope “talks about wealth being used to serve people, not as an end in itself.”

“What he has also done is raise the issue of the worship of money, the idolatry of money, and to say maybe that’s not what human life should be about, and that is a very, very radical critique of the hypercapitalist system, world system, that we’re living in today,” he said.

“What the pope is saying is that human life, our existence, should be more than just the accumulation of more wealth,” he continued. “I agree with that.”

And so do I – profoundly.

Ohiyesa, the late 19th-century Native American Indian of the Sioux (Dakota) Nation, had this to say on the subject of possessions and detachment:

“We original Americans have generally been despised by our white conquerors for our poverty and simplicity. They forget, perhaps, that our religion forbade the accumulation of wealth and the enjoyment of luxury. To us, as to other spiritually minded people in every age and race, the love of possessions is a snare, and the burdens of a complex society a source of needless peril and temptations . . . It was clear to us that virtue and happiness are independent of these things, if not incompatible with them . . . Furthermore, it was the rule of our life to share the fruits of our skill and success with our less fortunate brothers and sisters. Thus we kept our spirits free from the clog of pride, avarice, or envy, and carried out, as we believed, the divine decree — a matter profoundly important to us.”

I’m not trying to idolize an indigenous spirituality here or to elevate it as a saintly philosophy of life. But such elegant words of wisdom, for me, are grounding in their simplicity, and challenging in their ethical import. In a word, they speak compellingly to our cultural addictions. Namely, wealth, power, prestige, and material extravagance.

Sanders has twice promoted the pope’s agenda on the floor of the US Senate, including last February when he said the pope “showed great courage in raising issues that we very rarely hear discussed here in the Congress,” and quoted from Evangelii Gaudium, a letter written by Francis that some consider the blueprint of his papacy.

Sanders regularly plugs the pope’s stance on social media, including last week when he tweeted his support of Francis’ call for more humane immigration policy during the pontiff’s visit to the US-Mexico border.

We must heed Pope Francis' call to put compassion at the center of our immigration policy. https://t.co/17jgI5cX00

— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) February 18, 2016

Bottom Line

Bernie Sanders intuitively recognizes, applauds, and shares the same “Spirit of Poverty” as Pope Francis. They both articulate an emptiness of heart that has room for compassion and the call to service. Rather than a heart consumed with excessive desiring of what can never satisfy.

Cover Photo: Free Embedded Images/Getty Images/Joe Raedie

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