In today’s American Spectator, Acton’s Michael Matheson Miller focuses on Pope Francis’ “street smarts“: a man who knows poverty and economics at the most important and basic level.

It’s a counter-intuitive tale of one of Latin America’s most significant bishops living in modest lodgings, cooking his own meals, and riding the crowded public transportation system in Buenos Aires. Even the small but telling gesture of paying his own hotel bill after the Vatican conclave drew media attention.

As a priest and archbishop he went into the poorest parts of Argentina to minister to the people. He said this in a 2008 homily: “Today the place for Christ is in the street… The Lord wants us like Him; with an open heart, roaming the streets of Buenos Aires and carrying his message!”

His vision of engagement with the poor runs deep. Pope Francis has spoken eloquently about the need to treat poor people as “subjects” and not mere “objects” of the state or the economy.

Miller goes on to say that Pope Francis understands and highlights the social aspects of the market, and rejects notions that the poor are somehow “objects” of action, rather than active participants in the economy.

Read “Street Smarts” in American Spectator magazine.