In terms of the Church’s traditional teaching on serving and empowering the poor, Montanari concluded that facilitating access to private ownership, including its protection by the courts and rule of law, is a pivotal vehicle for uplifting impoverished nations. During the Vatican Radio interview he referenced a case study by Hernando De Soto which correlates Lima’s passage of more than 90 laws in the 1990s in favor of property rights.

The Peruvian government’s increasing legal access to and protection of land titles, patents and commercial real estate, according to Montanari, led to the legalization of about 389,000 small and medium-sized enterprises and resulted in “a positive impact” of over a half a million new jobs.“If you allow the poor to own a house….or to have a title to a property, you can allow them to enter a credit system” which they can use as collateral for starting up a business or other investments, he said.

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Read the complete article on the website of the Acton Institute