--- title: Pope Francis Taught the World a Lesson About Capitalism description: Pope Francis didn’t just preach from the pulpit—he lived among the people, especially the forgotten, writes John Hope Bryant. canonical: https://time.com/7279105/pope-francis-capitalism/ author: John Hope Bryant article:opinion: true article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2025-04-21T18:41:28.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:50:08.069Z article:section: Ideas og:title: Pope Francis Taught the World a Lesson About Capitalism og:description: Pope Francis didn’t just preach from the pulpit—he lived among the people, writes John Hope Bryant og:url: https://time.com/7279105/pope-francis-capitalism/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt94d930f503ec3306/6998c5ebe2d64b502fc5f43d/pope-francis-capitalism.jpg?branch=production&width=1024&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1024 og:image:height: 576 og:image:alt: Pope Francis Leads Mass At St. Peter's Square On World Children's Day og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Pope Francis Taught the World a Lesson About Capitalism twitter:description: Pope Francis didn’t just preach from the pulpit—he lived among the people, writes John Hope Bryant twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt94d930f503ec3306/6998c5ebe2d64b502fc5f43d/pope-francis-capitalism.jpg?branch=production&width=1024&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Pope Francis Taught the World a Lesson About Capitalism > Sponsored content. 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Austen Ivereigh is a British writer and journalist known for his two biographies of Pope Francis, as well a bestselling book written in collaboration with him: Let Us Dream: The Path to a Better Future._  by [John Hope Bryant](https://time.com/author/john-hope-bryant/)  ## John Hope Bryant Bryant, the founder, chairman and CEO of Operation HOPE, is the author of Capitalism For All: Inclusive Economics and the Future-Proofing of America (Wiley). Apr 21, 2025 6:41 PM UTC  VATICAN CITY, VATICAN - MAY 26: Pope Francis attends a Mass in St .Peter’s Square for the first World Children’s Day on May 26, 2024 in Vatican City, Vatican. (Photo by Franco Origlia/Getty Images) VATICAN CITY, VATICAN - MAY 26: Pope Francis attends a Mass in St .Peter’s Square for the first World Children’s Day on May 26, 2024 in Vatican City, Vatican. (Photo by Franco Origlia/Getty Images) Getty Images—2024 Franco Origlia  by [John Hope Bryant](https://time.com/author/john-hope-bryant/)  ## John Hope Bryant Bryant, the founder, chairman and CEO of Operation HOPE, is the author of Capitalism For All: Inclusive Economics and the Future-Proofing of America (Wiley). Apr 21, 2025 6:41 PM UTC On Monday morning, the world lost more than a religious leader. We lost a moral compass. A global shepherd for the poor. A gentle warrior who dared to tell the powerful the truth about their responsibilities to the powerless. His Holiness [Pope Francis](https://time.com/5762436/pope-francis-dies-obituary/) didn’t just preach from the pulpit—he lived among the people, especially the forgotten. In doing so, he redefined what moral leadership looks like in our time. I’m not Catholic. But I have always admired Pope Francis—not simply for his spiritual authority, but for his economic clarity. He understood something most leaders still struggle to grasp: the economy is not just a system. It’s a reflection of our values. And if our values are broken—if we worship money more than we uplift people—then the system will break too. [Pope Francis](https://time.com/7265876/pope-francis-social-media-memes/) believed in capitalism, but not the kind that exploits, extracts, and abandons. He believed in an economy that works for everyone—especially the poor, the marginalized, the excluded. I call this “Good Capitalism.” And in his own way, so did he. Poverty is not just about money. It’s about a lack of access, a lack of opportunity, a lack of belief. It’s about systems that were never designed to work for everyone—but can be reimagined to do exactly that. Pope Francis preached the same gospel in different language. When he said, “No one can remain insensitive to the inequalities that persist in the world,” he was calling out the same economic injustice that inspired me to found Operation HOPE and launch [Financial Literacy for All](https://time.com/6694236/financial-literacy-john-hope-bryant/). When he declared that “an economy that excludes kills,” he wasn’t being dramatic. He was being accurate. There’s a reason why Pope Francis chose the name of St. Francis of Assisi—the patron saint of the poor. He led with humility. He refused to live in the grand papal apartment. He drove a modest car. He washed the feet of prisoners. This wasn’t theater. It was theology. It was servant [leadership](https://time.com/7278953/pope-francis-death-global-leaders-reactions-tributes-jd-vance-trump/) in its purest form. And it was a quiet rebuke of the pride and greed that too often define our public life. Pope Francis said, “The rich must help, respect, and promote the poor.” His life—and his death—should challenge all of us to ask harder questions: What kind of economy are we building? Who is it leaving behind? And what would it mean to put people—not profits—at the center of our decisions? For me, this isn’t just theory. It’s practice. I’ve seen what happens when we teach someone how money works—when we improve a [credit score](https://time.com/7264586/credit-scores-key-healing-economy-and-democracy/), help someone buy their first home, or support a [small business](https://time.com/collection/closers/6564683/black-businesses-john-hope-bryant-2030/) in a struggling community. Dignity returns. Hope is restored. And the economy grows—not just in dollars, but in strength. This is what Pope Francis understood: that [the economy](https://time.com/7022544/inclusive-economics-dei-impact-business/) is not a math problem. It’s a moral problem. And solving it starts not in boardrooms or bank vaults, but in hearts. He may have been a pope. I’m just a businessman from Compton. But we both believed in the same truth: that we rise by lifting others. And that capitalism, when done right, can be one of the greatest tools for good the world has ever known. Pope Francis believed in “Good Capitalism.” I do too. And now more than ever, the world needs us to prove that it’s possible. ## Transcript I think at the end of the Francis pontificate, we have a church that is much better able to show forth who God is and how God is a church that is better able to walk with people in the complex circumstances of their lives, never compromising on the truth, but understanding that we are all sinners, but we are all also welcome in the church, that there is room for all of us, and somehow we'll all find our way through it. My name is Austin Avery. I'm British and I'm a biographer of Pope Francis and a collaborator with him. We wrote a book together in 2020. Francis, I think, set out from the very beginning to to change the culture of the church, not to change its doctrine, not to change its laws, but to change the way the culture with which it operates. He was the first Latin American pope, the first pope to come from outside Europe, and the first Jesuit as well. So all these things are big firsts. In many ways, I think you can argue that he's the first pope of a new global age for the church. And I've said from the beginning of the pontificate that the basic direction that he has put the church in is the direction that the church will follow, I think, for the next generation. I think at the heart of Francis's achievements have been a whole series of of reforms in Rome, and which there was a clear mandate from the cardinals to do in finance in the way that the above all that the Vatican interacts with the rest of the church and bishops will now tell you that they're received in a whole different way now. In Rome, there's this new culture, if you like, of service. I think there's a the humility with which Francis always operated. He's left that mark on the church. There's there's there's no question the church is a humbler place. Talking about his teachings and his documents, we have, of course, the great example of Laudato Si, his teaching on care for creation. Fratelli tutti, he's called to fraternity. But also we have a morality which was the fruit of two synods on the family the joy of love, which is all about helping people to enter into relationships of commitment. You know, it's about marriage, but it's about not just about saying the church believes that marriage should be forever, but also helping people to live that commitment in a society where, of course, that's become harder and harder. He's opened up a whole new pastoral space for the church in walking with the divorced and remarried, and indeed those in what are sometimes called irregular relationships, relationships which don't conform to church's doctrine of marriage. And the same is true, I think, really, of people in same sex relationships or indeed other kinds of relationships. Francis broke important and significant new ground in the church's relationship with LGBT people. I think most of them would say that most of them would. Also, many of them would say, well, you know, he could have gone further. One of the most famous lines early on in the pontificate was the question. He said in reply to a journalist on the plane back from Rio de Janeiro, who asked not about homosexuality, but about a particular Vatican official who had had some gay scandal attached to them early on in their lives. And Francis said, who am I to judge? And Conservatives kind of went into uproar about this, saying, you know, he's the Pope. Of course he should judge. And homosexuality is church doctrine. He wasn't questioning church doctrine on homosexuality. He was simply saying what Jesus said, which is that we have no right to judge people. But it was a very, very important message that he gave also because he used the word gay. I think the first time the Pope has ever used the word gay, and that's really been his approach to to gay people. There's a critique of Francis that comes from, from more conservative sectors who think that he has undermined the church's commitment to the defence of doctrine faced with a skeptical liberal society. I think what they fail to understand is that Francis isn't interested in waging cultural battles. You know, he doesn't believe that the church should be a cultural warrior. And so I think a lot of the misunderstandings of him come from seeing him through this very, uh, particularly, I think, in the case of the United States, through the lens of the culture wars. And it just doesn't apply to him. You know, he's neither kind of left nor right in that sense. I think from the left, he's he's often been criticized for sort of not going far enough. You know, he talked he talks a good talk but ultimately doesn't deliver. But I think the misconception there is to believe that he is in some way a liberal or a progressive who was setting out from the beginning to change church doctrine. That was never Francis, as I argued from the beginning. I think Pope Francis's greatest legacy will be the transformation of the internal culture of the Catholic Church, that it is no longer enough to hand down doctrines and expect people to follow them, but rather a church that walks with people that understands them and their lives and the difficulties that they face. Evangelium, which means preach the gospel, is the name of the Constitution that he promulgated in Rome in 2022, which is the fruit of a many, many years of consultation which enshrines this culture of service, this idea that the the Vatican exists to serve the Pope, yes, but also to serve the local churches. And at the heart of the way that the Vatican needs to operate is, in fact, Synodality. Is this listening deeply to the other? And he called together this remarkable three year process, the biggest ever consultation in human history, uh, to instill this new culture in the church across the world. And I think this will be his great legacy. I think in the future, the church will become more synodal, more missionary, more pastoral, more merciful. So a church that is shows forth the mercy of God and particularly God's style, Jesus's own style of opening up spaces in which people can grow, and discernment to understand that actually the church sometimes needs to navigate difficult, complex situations and that, you know there isn't always a one size fits all answer to things. I think that will be his great legacy, will be the transformation of the culture of the church. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"OpinionNewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/7279105/pope-francis-capitalism/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/7279105/pope-francis-capitalism/"},"headline":"Pope Francis Taught the World a Lesson About Capitalism","datePublished":"2025-04-21T18:41:28.000Z","dateModified":"2026-08-04T07:50:08.069Z","description":"Pope Francis didn’t just preach from the pulpit—he lived among the people, especially the forgotten, writes John Hope Bryant.","url":"https://time.com/7279105/pope-francis-capitalism/","keywords":["Capitalism"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt94d930f503ec3306/6998c5ebe2d64b502fc5f43d/pope-francis-capitalism.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"John Hope Bryant","jobTitle":"Bryant, the founder, chairman and CEO of Operation HOPE, is the author of Capitalism For All: Inclusive Economics and the Future-Proofing of America (Wiley).","url":"https://time.com/author/john-hope-bryant/"}],"articleSection":"Ideas","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt94d930f503ec3306/6998c5ebe2d64b502fc5f43d/pope-francis-capitalism.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"Pope Francis Leads Mass At St. Peter's Square On World Children's Day","caption":"Pope Francis Leads Mass At St. Peter's Square On World Children's Day","creditText":"Getty Images—2024 Franco Origlia","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/ideas/","name":"Ideas"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/capitalism/","name":"Capitalism"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/7279105/pope-francis-capitalism/","name":"Pope Francis Taught the World a Lesson About Capitalism"}}]},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"Pope Francis’ Greatest Achievement Was Emphasizing Mercy","description":"Austen Ivereigh is a British writer and journalist known for his two biographies of Pope Francis, as well a bestselling book written in collaboration with him: Let Us Dream: The Path to a Better Future.","thumbnailUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/V0uEvr1Q/poster.jpg?width=720","uploadDate":"2025-04-21T13:10:48.000Z","contentUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/V0uEvr1Q.m3u8","embedUrl":"https://time.com/7279105/pope-francis-capitalism/","duration":"PT6M26S","potentialAction":{"@type":"SeekToAction","target":"https://time.com/7279105/pope-francis-capitalism/?jw_start={seek_to_second_number}","startOffset-input":"required name=seek_to_second_number"}}] ```