While much of the world’s attention was focused on Pope Francis explaining that the Roman Catholic Church accepted the Big Bang Theory and evolution as scientific fact, another address was his clearest statement yet that the church stands with the rights of the poor – and a preview of an upcoming encyclical on ecology and the environment.

Participants in the World Meeting of Popular Movements conference in Rome, including newly reelected Bolivian President Evo Morales, visited the Pope to discuss problems facing the poor, the unemployed and those who’ve lost their land.  The Pope read to them from his six-page, single-spaced set of prepared remarks – one of the longest of his papacy.

He said it’s wrong that “land, housing and work are increasingly unavailable to the majority” of the world’s population, and that expressing “solidarity” in the modern world means being ready “to fight against the “empire of money’”.

The Pope realizes that his critics – especially American political conservatives, many of whom are on Rupert Murdoch’s payroll – will “say that the Pope is a communist.”

But, he continued, “They don't understand that love for the poor is at the center of the Gospel,” and that his solidarity with the world’s poor is “the social doctrine of the church.”

The rest of the remarks included his concern for the degradation of the environment, the rights for farmers to have land, and for young people to have work.