Cool Pope: Unions Are Holy

In America, the political party that most closely identifies with religion also works tirelessly to destroy labor unions. According to god’s man on earth: yall are fucking up.

In a recent address to Italian union members, pseudonymous Catholic boss Pope “Francis”—who has in the past demonstrated his coolness by being chill about fucking and yelling at rich people—said yet another thing that we cannot help but to interpret as cool. Not only did he talk about how holy labor unions are, but he also called on unions to be fucking hardcore.

The word of god:

The union is an expression of the prophetic profile of society. The union is born and reborn every time that, like the biblical prophets, it gives a voice to those who have none, denounces those who would “sell the needy for a pair of sandals” (cf. Amos 2: 6), unmasks the powerful who trample the rights of the most vulnerable workers, defends the cause of the foreigner, the least, the discarded. As shown by the great tradition of the CISL, the unions movement has its great seasons when it is prophecy. But in our advanced capitalist societies, the union risks losing its prophetic nature, and becoming too similar to the institutions and powers that it should instead criticize. The union, with the passing of time, has ended up resembling politics, or rather, political parties, their language, their style. And instead, if this typical and diverse dimension is lacking, its action within businesses will lose strength and effectiveness. This is prophecy…

The capitalism of our time does not understand the value of the trade union, because it has forgotten the social nature of the economy, of the business. This is one of the greatest sins. Market economy: no. Let us say, social market economy, as St. John Paul II taught: social market economy. The economy has forgotten the social nature that it has as a vocation, the social nature of business, of life, of bonds and pacts. But perhaps our society does not understand the union also because it does not fight enough in terms of the “not yet rights”: of the existential peripheries, among those rejected from work. Let us think of the 40 % of young people under 25, who do not have work. Here, in Italy. And you must fight there! These are existential peripheries. It does not fight for the immigrants, for the poor, who are below the city walls; or rather it does not understand simply because at times – and it happens in every family – corruption has entered the heart of some unionists. Do not let yourselves be obstructed by this. I know that you have been committed for some time, working in the right directions, especially with migrants, the young and women. And what I am about to say may seem obvious, but in the world of work women are still in second class. You might say, “No, but there is that businesswoman, that other one…”; yes, but if women earn less, are more easily exploited… do something. I encourage you to continue and, if possible, to do more. Inhabiting the peripheries can become an action strategy, a priority for the union of today and of tomorrow. There is no good society without a good union, and there is no good union that is not reborn every day in the peripheries, that does not transform the discarded stones of the economy into its cornerstones.