“It’s clear that wars and climate change cause hunger; let’s stop presenting it as an incurable illness.”

Pope Francis made this remarkable and easily refuted statement Monday in remarks — that the usual left-leaning media called “powerful” — before something called the United Nations’ Food and Agricultural Organization. The assembled bureaucrats and high pooh-bahs, at least those still awake after sumptuous, expense-account lunches at some of Manhattan’s tonier eateries (no hunger in Turtle Bay), gave the Pope a standing-O for his iteration of tired old liberation theology talking points.

Sorry, Your Holiness. With respect, it’s not at all clear that wars and climate change are, as you claim, the “root causes” of hunger. Wars and climate change have always been with us (you could look it up). But hunger is caused, in peace as well as war, by nations with nonsensical political and economic systems presided over by kleptocratic elites. In these countries, even those with large potential work forces and natural resources, very little wealth is created. And most of the little wealth that is created is stolen by the small group of thieves in charge. (Francis seems to prefer these countries to the capitalistic ones, which be berates for “selfishness,” but where hunger is less of a problem than obesity.)

Francis suggested that the world, through international law and collaborative action, has the means to eliminate conflicts and war. I guess here he’s referring to how the League of Nations kept another world war from breaking out and how the United Nations (League of Nations 2.0) has kept the world such a safe and peaceful place since 1945. And he suggested that we could lick climate change if a certain large, wealthy, and pig-headed nation would re-join the Paris hustle on climate change and we all would turn off our air-conditioners during the summer (that means you too, Al).

We’ve heard this mix of blue-sky smoke-blowing and Marxist sky-larking from Francis before. And we’ll hear it again. It seems to be his only game.