Pope attacks globalised idolisation of money Pope Francis has turned his sights on globalisation, attacking an economic system he condemns as based on the idolisation of money after shaking up the Roman Catholic Church last week by warning that it must shake off an obsession with abortion, contraception and homosexuality. Unemployment and the value of work were a major theme of the pontiff's visit on Sunday to Sardinia, one of Italy's poorest regions and home to its last and dwindling coal mining community. The island depends on government subsidies and has been hit hard by recession and government austerity policies. Departing from his set text, as has become his trademark, Pope Francis addressed a meeting in the island's main port of Cagliari where a huge crowd, including miners, chanted "work, work, work." "Where there is no work, there is no dignity," the Argentine pontiff said after a week in which some western stock markets hit record highs. It is not a problem of Italy and Europe . . . It is the consequence of a world choice, of an economic system that brings about this tragedy, an economic system that has at its centre an idol which is called money. The Pope's words followed an address to Catholic doctors in Rome on Friday in which he attacked a "widespread preoccupation with profits and today's throwaway culture, that enslave the hearts and minds of us all." "Greed," he said, "is a sin against the First Commandment. One cannot worship God and money. Here is why. Money becomes idolatry. And Jesus tells us that you cannot serve money and God. It must be one or the other. In that same address, the pontiff encouraged Catholic doctors to refuse to perform abortions - strongly pro-life comments that some interpreted in the light of a debate between liberal and conservative Catholics as balancing the 12,000-word text of a remarkably frank interview with a Jesuit journal released last Thursday. In that interview the Pope said the Church could fall "like a house of cards" if it remained preoccupied with abortion, gay marriage and contraception. Catholics who have welcomed the pastoral approach of Francis, in contrast to the more distant and cerebral orthodoxy of his predecessor Benedict XVI, say it would be wrong to interpret this stance as an attempt to appease "liberal" Catholics, more that he is trying to bring an inward-looking Church weakened by corruption closer to the individual. "With his words, the Pope is not changing doctrine, but he has certainly dictated a new pastoral agenda and has indicated which values are not negotiable in his Church: pardon, proximity, sharing and assistance," commented Carlo Marroni, a Vatican expert and journalist. Father Robert Dodaro, professor and president of the Augustinianum Institute in Rome, said the interview was about style and communication. It is not an indication of a future doctrinal shift in papal teaching concerning abortion or homosexuality. Pope Francis is stating that the Catholic Church in general has become over-identified in the world at large with these issues as though the Church is interested only in them. He wants to shift the balance away from what he believes is an overemphasis on these moral issues from the Vatican. But he does not want to change Church teaching on these questions, not even an iota," Father Dodaro said, adding that officials in the Curia - the Vatican's powerful bureaucracy which the Pope has started to shake up - had been "caught by surprise" by the interview.