The Catholic or the Davos Man?

Political change is afoot in Canada. Well, maybe not political change, but change of personnel.

On January 6, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, leader of the federal Liberal Party for 12 years and Prime Minister for ten, announced his resignation. It has been a long time coming. Trudeau and his minority government’s approval ratings have been tanking for months and revolt in his once tight caucus barely contained.

A week following the announcement, in a pre-gaming of the January 16 press conference that would launch his leadership bid to replace Trudeau, Mark Carney was a guest on The Late Show with Jon Stewart. It was a jokey, wink-wink, nudge-nudge exchange that presented Carney as the only smart Canadian in the North American room. Carney is the clear frontrunner of the group of five contenders. On January 31 he has the endorsement of more than 50 members of the Liberal caucus.

Carney arrives at the political gunfight wielding a silver spoon. He has never held an elected office (presumably why he told Stewart he was an “outsider”), but the former governor of the Bank of Canada (2008-2013) and governor of the Bank of England (2013-2020) has been tucked in the inside pocket of the Liberal Party inner circle for years.

His privileged position extends beyond Ottawa or Westminster. If ever there was a man who fit the profile of the Samuel P. Huntington-coined phrase “Davos Man,” it is Carney. His Wikipedia page reads as a central casting curriculum vitae of a globalizing elite. It is a profile for which he is both lauded and pilloried in equal measure.

Carney is the United Nations special envoy on climate finance, co-chair for the Glasgow Finance Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ), advisory board chair for the progressive think-tank Canada 2020 and sits on the foundation board of the World Economic Forum. The list goes on: chair of the Group of Thirty, a member of the boards of Bloomberg Philanthropies, Harvard University Overseers and The Rideau Hall Foundation.

All of this is well rehearsed. What is less known is that Mark Carney is a Catholic. His religious bona fides are rarely mentioned in Canada, but featured more prominently after his move to the U.K. In 2015, two years after taking up the helm at the Bank of England, The Tablet listed Carney as the most influential Catholic in Britain. A 2021 Wall Street Journal article noted that Carney “goes to Catholic church at least once a week, meditates and is a fan of Benedictine monk Laurence Freeman, the director of the World Community of Christian Meditation.” Freeman is the successor to John Main, the Benedictine monk who adopted and mainstreamed the use of Hindu-inspired mantras in Christian meditation.

There is one transnational non-profit organization with which Carney is involved that combines his Catholicism and his Net-Zero, New World Order sensibilities.

Carney sits on the Steering Committee of the Council for Inclusive Capitalism at the Vatican. The council emerged in 2020 as a co-venture of the Coalition for Inclusive Capitalism and the Vatican. Both the coalition and the council are spearheaded by Lynn Forester de Rothschild, billionaire philanthropist, businesswoman and two-time fundraiser for the presidential bids of Hillary Clinton.

The Vatican’s “capitalism with a human face” council seeks to move “the private sector to create a more inclusive, sustainable and trusted economic system.” Carney has been involved with the council from the outset. An early group photo once featured on the website shows Carney standing two to the right of Pope Francis, sandwiched between de Rothschild and Brian Moynihan, CEO of Bank of America.

In his 2021 book Value(s): Building a Better World For All, Carney wrote that the inspiration for the book came from Pope Francis himself. When a “range of policymakers, business people, academics, labour leaders and charity workers gathered at the Vatican to discuss the future of the market system,” Pope Francis “surprised us by joining the lunch.” It was in this impromptu encounter that the pontiff challenged his guests to “turn back the market into humanity.” Though Carney does not mention the council by name, it is almost certainly an early meeting of the group to which he refers.

The council website betrays a curious overlay of Catholic “values,” drawing heavily on Pope Francis’ 2015 encyclical Laudato Si’, over a base of United Nations’ “values.” The council invites businesses to “join them” in signing up to “actionable commitments aligned with the World Economic Forum International Business Council’s Pillars for sustainable value creation — People, Planet, Principles of Governance and Prosperity — and that advance the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.”

In looking over the commitments promised by the long list of prominent businesses, it is apparent that alignment with WEF and UN principles trump that of Catholic teaching.

As an example, the pharmaceutical multinational company Bayer AG promises to provide “100 million women in low- and middle-income countries with access to modern contraception,” saying that “we want to strengthen the role of women and intensify our efforts in modern family planning.”

Perhaps the reason that Carney’s Catholicism escapes notice is that he is simply following in line with previous Canadian Catholic prime ministers who do not disturb the electorate with Catholic sensibilities. In the nearly 50 years that Catholics from Pierre Elliott Trudeau through to his son Justin have led Canada (in that span, every PM but two have been Catholic), the country has emerged as one of the most socially progressive and anti-Catholic countries of the G7.

As a way of greeting the 2022 US Supreme Court overturn of Roe v. Wade, Carney took to Twitter. “I’m proud to live in a country where a woman’s right to choose is so strongly supported. But the devastating decision today in the US is a clear reminder that progress should never be taken for granted. Our commitment to protecting fundamental rights must be unwavering.”

When Carney announced his leadership bid, he drew heavily on his role as a sound financial expert who stands removed from the political fray.

“I’ve helped manage multiple crises, and I’ve helped save two economies. I know how business works, and I know how to make it work for you,” said Carney.

But his track record betrays a stronger alignment with the mores and allegiances of global markets than with Catholic sensibilities.

Carney is a Catholic of a different stripe than the Trudeaus. The success of his leadership bid is uncertain, and a quick election may ensure that whoever emerges as Liberal leader has a short tenure, but the wait for a prime minister who will address some of the more glaring divergences of Canadian culture from a culture of life may yet be a long one.

(Note: A slightly different version of this article was published in The Catholic Register on January 22, 2025.)