ABSTRACT
Laudato Si’ may contain only a few overt references to private property as a social institution, but its broad principles, developed at length, bear directly and critically on this familiar arrangement of public-private power. The vision of private property that emerges from Laudato Si’ is a distinctly progressive one, quite far from popular neo-liberal, free-market, and libertarian understandings. Laudato Si’s criticisms of modern culture are thus, in many respects, critiques of private property as commonly understood, especially property regimes that maximize landowner liberty and thereby facilitate the ecological degradation and social injustice that the encyclical condemns. Sharing can mean a division of the income or produce generated by land and resources. That division could come through widespread ownership itself. Readers of Laudato Si’ in the end are left to consider for themselves possible ways to promote sharing to meet the needs of the poor.
