ABSTRACT
Pope Francis’ reformulation of the social doctrine of the Catholic church is a political theology that confirms established theological positions in some areas and introduces new ones in others. The Argentinean pontiff accentuates social concerns of Catholic teaching in ways that centres on the materially poor and socially excluded. He relates these concerns in innovative ways to ecology as the first pontiff to recognize global climate change as a challenge for humankind. There is a connection between this recognition of climate change and the role of observations of the state of the world in the inductive method that leads to this theological thinking of how the world should be governed according to the divine will. Nonetheless, far from specifying what kind of policies God calls for, Pope Francis’ political theology is mostly denunciative in its orientation. Through his focus on the suffering of the excluded, the pope calls attention to political problems without providing detailed political solutions.
