How Pope Francis can finish what Occupy Wall Street started

But a vastly larger number of Americans supported the ideas behind the Occupy movement. A December 2011 Pew Research poll found that while Occupy at that point had just a 44 percent approval rating, 77 percent of Americans believed that “too much power in the hands of a few rich people and corporations,” and 61 percent believed that the U.S. economic system was unfair and favored the wealthy.

The ideas about inequality expressed by Occupy in 2011 and by Francis today are not uncommon among Americans. But the pope is an infinitely more powerful conduit to carry and champion them. And he can be that champion without suddenly ditching the papacy and accepting a policy gig at the White House. The pope, with his infallibility and his U.S. base of over 75 million American Catholics, is already standing atop one of history’s largest soapboxes.