- The economic power of the Catholic Church in Italy: The Church is a true economic powerhouse in Italy, with immense real estate, financial, and commercial assets. It also exerts strong influence on fiscal policy and public resources. Its presence in key sectors of the Italian economy makes it one of the most influential actors on the national economic scene. The promotion of its “charismatic leaders” facilitates its cultural penetration into society.
- Economic interests surrounding the Jubilee: 2025 marks the Holy Year, during which up to 35 million pilgrims are expected to visit Italy, potentially spending over 16 billion euros. This wealth will mainly benefit the hospitality and restaurant sectors, landlords offering tourist rentals, and the Vatican itself. The heightened visibility of religious themes—also through tributes to Bergoglio—helps maintain public focus on the Jubilee, for which the Italian government has invested billions.
- Treaties between Italy and the Vatican: Agreements such as the Lateran Pacts, signed by the fascist government in 1929 and only partially revised in 1984, guarantee the Church privileges and a prominent presence in Italian public life, confirming its role as a key political and social actor. Thus, the death of a pope takes on a state-level significance.
- Interests of bourgeois parties: Proximity to the Catholic Church benefits the main parliamentary parties. It helps them attract Catholic voters, especially more traditional segments, and serves the conservative agenda on ethical and moral issues (like abortion, family, and gender issues), particularly for center-right parties. Furthermore, it can secure support—or at least “benevolent neutrality”—from the Vatican, which remains a key player in conferring legitimacy to institutional bourgeois parties.
The Fascination with Bergoglio Among the “Radical Left”
While the above highlights why Bergoglio’s death has shaped political discourse and the interest of bourgeois parties in religious themes, it’s also worth examining the admiration Pope Francis has received from parties of the bourgeois parliamentary left—and even from parts of the so-called “radical left.”
For example, Alleanza Verdi e Sinistra (Green & Left Alliance) leaders Bonelli and Fratoianni have praised Bergoglio for his positions on immigration, labor, the environment, and war (Fratoianni even calling him “a guide” and “a reference point even for someone like me, who isn’t a believer”). The fascination with Pope Francis extends beyond the current parliamentary sphere.
The Communist Refoundation Party (PRC), especially its secretary Maurizio Acerbo, has often referenced Bergoglio positively (Acerbo recently said, “Pope Francis is a man of peace. The world needs his voice”). There have even been official exchanges of esteem between the pope and the party’s youth wing. The PRC has also established connections with other high-ranking Church officials, including inviting Cardinal Matteo Maria Zuppi to speak at its national festival.
Potere al Popolo! (PaP, Power to the People!) has also cited Pope Francis as a model, with coordinator Giorgio Cremaschi even linking him to socialism (!), and issued tributes upon his death. One study found that in 2021, 45% of PaP supporters held a generally positive opinion of the pope. Similarly, Unione Popolare (Popular Union, an electoral coalition that existed between PaP and PRC) mentioned Bergoglio in its electoral platform. Youth organizations like OSA and Cambiare Rotta (Change Course, linked to Rete dei Comunisti - Communist Network) formally joined the Jubilee of Adolescents in April 2025, portraying Bergoglio as a target of war propaganda due to his diplomatic efforts in the Ukraine conflict. Activists like Ilaria Salis and Luca Casarini also expressed condolences.
These examples, while not exhaustive, indicate a trend among various “radical left” parties and coalitions that have shown affinity toward Bergoglio and the Catholic Church during his papacy.
Can this fascination—or the comparisons between Bergoglio and socialism—be justified by real breaks with traditional doctrine? The arguments in favor cite Bergoglio’s stances on war, poverty, and the environment. However, his approach to Ukraine and the Middle East aligns with the Church’s historic neutrality in major conflicts. The Church has long represented a petty-bourgeois pacifism, condemning war on a purely moral level and promoting an abstract concept of peace that lacks any framework of social justice. This kind of “peace” soothes the conscience of those unwilling to critically challenge capitalism and war.
Nor do Bergoglio’s views on poverty and the environment break with capitalism. His positions, rooted in Christian social theory, advocate an “ethical capitalism” in which class divisions remain and production stays in the hands of the bourgeoisie. His critique of “market excesses” invokes a vague idea of social solidarity and ethical consumption, avoiding any fundamental critique of capitalist structures.
This outlook—historically championed by the Church and Christian democratic parties—sells the illusion that class conflict can be resolved through individual moral reform and class collaborationism. In times of economic crisis and declining legitimacy, the bourgeoisie has always used class collaboration, which benefits only the capitalists, to preserve social peace. Christian solidarism has long played this role.
Bergoglio, like his predecessors, has openly declared himself an enemy of Marxism. Despite occasional talk of dialogue, he remains fundamentally opposed to Marxist theory, as stated in his preface to a work by Benedict XVI:
“Together with St. John Paul II, he [Ratzinger] developed and proposed a Christian vision of human rights capable of challenging both in theory and practice the totalitarian claims of the Marxist state and the atheistic ideology it was based on. The real opposition between Marxism and Christianity, Ratzinger observed, lies not in the Christian’s preferential option for the poor [...] but in the profound difference in how redemption is conceived.”
In line with Christian doctrine, Bergoglio insists that redemption is possible only through God, not, as Marxism posits, through human efforts in the here and now. Equating Bergoglio’s doctrine with socialism is plainly anti-Marxist.
Even regarding inclusivity and civil rights, Bergoglio has remained largely aligned with traditional Church doctrine. Limited openings to divorced individuals have not been matched by progressive stances on abortion, contraception, or homosexuality. Additionally, he has faced accusations of complicity with Argentina’s Videla regime and of covering up abuse cases within the Church.
Bergoglio may represent a less overtly conservative wing within the Church, but this does not change the institution’s fundamentally reactionary nature.
Conclusion
In light of the above, those in the workers’ movement who look to Bergoglio or selectively adopt his positions are mistaken. There is no real break in advocating peace that ultimately benefits capital, nor in preaching to the working class that they should renounce struggle in favor of hope for redemption in the afterlife.
More broadly, it is unrealistic to expect socially progressive ideas to originate from religious leaders or institutions. By nature, religion is idealist and thus opposed to the materialism at the core of progressive and revolutionary theory. Religion is an ideological tool of the ruling class, as clearly explained by Lenin, following Marx and Engels:
“Religion is the opium of the people — this dictum by Marx is the corner-stone of the whole Marxist outlook on religion. Marxism has always regarded all modern religions and churches, and each and every religious organisation, as instruments of bourgeois reaction that serve to defend exploitation and to befuddle the working class.”
Thus, it is a mistake for those who call themselves Marxists or communists to rely on religious doctrine to combat phenomena such as imperialist war or social inequality. Lenin emphasized not just that religion is an opiate, but also a reflection of people’s suffering:
“Marxism is materialism. As such, it is as relentlessly hostile to religion as was the materialism of the eighteenth-century Encyclopaedists or the materialism of Feuerbach. This is beyond doubt. But the dialectical materialism of Marx and Engels goes further than the Encyclopaedists and Feuerbach, for it applies the materialist philosophy to the domain of history, to the domain of the social sciences. We must combat religion—that is the ABC of all materialism, and consequently of Marxism. But Marxism is not a materialism which has stopped at the ABC. Marxism goes further. It says: We must know how to combat religion, and in order to do so we must explain the source of faith and religion among the masses in a materialist way. The combating of religion cannot be confined to abstract ideological preaching, and it must not be reduced to such preaching. It must be linked up with the concrete practice of the class movement, which aims at eliminating the social roots of religion. [...] In modern capitalist countries these roots are mainly social. The deepest root of religion today is the socially downtrodden condition of the working masses and their apparently complete helplessness in face of the blind forces of capitalism, which every day and every hour inflicts upon ordinary working people the most horrible suffering and the most savage torment, a thousand times more severe than those inflicted by extra-ordinary events, such as wars, earthquakes, etc. “Fear made the gods.” Fear of the blind force of capital — blind because it cannot be foreseen by the masses of the people — a force which at every step in the life of the proletarian and small proprietor threatens to inflict, and does inflict “sudden”, “unexpected”, “accidental” ruin, destruction, pauperism, prostitution, death from starvation —such is the root of modern religion.”
Therefore, merely preaching atheism to the masses is an empty intellectual exercise. Marxists must fight religion by combating the social oppression that fuels it among the working class.
Declaring oneself an atheist while legitimizing Bergoglio’s views in public discourse does nothing to fight religion or exploitation. Instead, it reflects the opportunism of parties drifting toward social compromise and collaboration with bourgeois parties, as seen in many contemporary Italian examples.
Unsurprisingly, the forces that have elevated the pope as a figurehead in the fight against war are often the same ones that have abandoned the struggle to build an independent working-class perspective—and a communist party. In seeking an “easy way” to gain consensus, they introduce petty-bourgeois ideology into the workers’ movement, without even expanding popular mobilization.
These reflections underscore the incompatibility between true class politics and the adoption of bourgeois ideology by “progressive” parties. This contradiction remains, no matter who the religious leader is—even one, like Pope Francis, masked in modernity and reform.
Lorenzo Vagni