One week before the International Council of the World Social Forum organised its meeting in Tunis, Pope Francis organised his own social forum in Rome: a World Meeting of Popular Movements!

A large  number of social movements from all over the world gathered in the Vatican, some of them ‘faith-based’, though not all catholic, others not even religious. There were landless farmers, informal sector workers, waste pickers, homeless people …

Also present was the Bolivian president Evo Morales. The Pope spoke of his ‘preferential option for the poor’ – the social doctrine of the Church and one of the major points of Liberation Theology. He spoke of the right to ‘land, a roof and work’. He said that in this world, where human beings are enslaved to capital, poor and excluded people have to react, as they always do. Because the current situation is unacceptable and not sustainable.

What this means clearly is that at the highest level of one of the major religions in this world, the problems are well understood. Whether this will have direct consequences, in the Church and beyond, remains to be seen, but this political act of Pope Francis has to be welcomed. Today’s world with its inequalities and destruction of nature, human and non human, is indeed unsustainable. Urgent changes are needed.

The question is however whether this ‘preferential option for the poor’ can be enough? Too many people, including on the left, only think of poverty when they consider social questions. And surely, serious policies are needed to help the poor, to make health care and education available, and, as the Pope said, land, a roof and a job, with a decent wage.

But what if at the same time poverty is constantly created? What if social services are being dismantled, if welfare states are eliminated, if jobs disappear and houses become too expensive? People then become poor. But should they first become poor before they have a right to help? Should we not do everything to prevent poverty, to make it impossible? Should we not urgently stop the impoverishment processes?

Poverty is not only a problem of poor people. It is a problem of the whole of society. Top incomes should be obliged to seriously contribute to redistribution. And middle classes should be protected so as to prevent their falling into poverty.

Poverty is said to be ‘multidimensional’, even if income is at the heart of the problem. Maybe we should shift this ‘multidimensionality’ to refer, not to thematic dimensions of poverty, but to societal dimensions, in other words, to all groups in society. We should care about the poor, but not only about the poor. We should protect middle classes and ensure that top income groups pay taxes and are involved in the redistributional effort. These are the multiple dimensions of poverty.

If all people have a decent income, poverty is eradicated. They will then have access to health care, education, land and housing. Yes, this will need some legal changes. But by focusing on ‘multidimensional poverty’ as it is done now, the income dimension is too often forgotten and poor people become invisible in the conceptual fog. Let us focus on transformative social protection and ban poverty. Make poverty impossible and illeg