The Catechism of the Catholic Church says:[1] 2403 The right to private property, acquired or received in a just way, does not do away with the original gift of the earth to the whole of mankind.
Those who hold goods for use and consumption should use them with moderation, reserving the better part for guests, for the sick and the poor.In 1967, Pope Paul VI wrote in the encyclical Populorum progressio:[2] Everyone knows that the Fathers of the Church laid down the duty of the rich toward the poor in no uncertain terms.
Christian tradition has never recognized the right to private property as absolute and untouchable: "On the contrary, it has always understood this right within the broader context of the right common to all to use the goods of the whole of creation: the right to private property is subordinated to the right to common use, to the fact that goods are meant for everyone".
Private property, in fact, regardless of the concrete forms of the regulations and juridical norms relative to it, is in its essence only an instrument for respecting the principle of the universal destination of goods; in the final analysis, therefore, it is not an end but a means.Pope Francis included commentaries on this concept in his 2015 encyclical letter, Laudato si',[4] where he refers to "the common destination of goods",[5] and in his 2020 encyclical, Fratelli tutti.
[6] Thomas Banchoff of Georgetown University in the USA noted in an article in The Tablet in September 2023 that, since the 1891 publication of Leo XIII's Rerum Novarum, "Catholic Social Teaching has been organised around core principles including human dignity, the common good, subsidiarity and the universal destination of goods".