“The problem for Bergoglio and for the economic culture of Argentine Catholicism is prosperity. While poverty preserves the moral purity and religiosity of the 'people', prosperity corrupts it, secularizes it."
This short book is a long journey in search of the cultural roots of Argentina's economic decline, roots that sink into religious history. From the Bible to Pope Francis, from Hispanic Christianity to Peronism, the question is whether there is a link between poverty and Catholicity or, at least, the type of Catholicity that was affirmed in Argentina. If economic development is not inhibited by theological prejudices, if free trade is not held back by moral taboos, if the creation of wealth is not hindered by the cult of “holy poverty,” if the enormous influence of the Church and its authorities do not feed the poor factory. Self-sufficiency and pauperism, paternalism and welfare, familism and clientelism are not bumps in the road, but the coherent fruit of these cultural assumptions. Therefore, it is no coincidence that the triumph of the “Catholic nation” and the ideological hegemony of its secular vehicle, Peronism, caused the progressive economic decline of Argentina. What to deduce? That only a profound cultural change will allow it to take off. A change capable of breaking the symbiosis between economics and theology. There is no historical turn on the material plane that is not preceded by an ideal revolution.