John Paul has in fact been very scathing indeed about the damage caused by "free-market capitalism". That part of what he says has probably got a lot less attention in the media than it deserves.

What happened in the collapse of the "communist" regimes in Eastern Europe, w3hich deserved to collapse, was that the Western power structure - more especially that in the USA and the UK - saw it as an opportunity to wade in to exploit every opportunity, with no regard whatsoever for the well being of the people. The result has been, incredibly, that for many many people they now look back on the "communist" period as a kind of flawed golden age, when at least there was food on the table, you could be sure of a steady job, and the mafia weren't running wild.

The truth is, for the people who run things, it wasn't bringing freedom for the people they were really interested in, it was freedom to exploit the people. That's why they get on so well with the regime in China, which is as oppressive as can be, but is friendly to foreign capitalists.

And that has been more or less the way John Paul seems to have seen it.