>> 'Poveri Tutti' conference: 'Pope wants us all to be paupers' >> A distinguished Italian economist is deriding Pope Francis' encyclical Fratelli Tutti as "not at all inspired by the thought of St. Francis of Assisi, but rather by the satirical novel Utopia by St. Thomas More." >> "But St. Thomas More, writing Utopia, was joking, he was not serious," quips Professor Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, a contributor to Pope Benedict XVI's encyclical Caritas in Veritate and former president of the Vatican Bank. >> Speaking in Rome Wednesday at a conference called "Poveri Tutti" (All Paupers) — a title parodying Francis' Fratelli Tutti — Tedeschi argued that "economics is not a science" and "the economy is but a tool that should serve to satisfy human needs." >> However, "for this very reason it can be used to not satisfy them, but rather to terrify and influence," he observed.