ABSTRACT
Laudato Si’ may contain only a few overt references to private property as a social institution, but its broad principles, developed at length, bear directly and critically on this familiar arrangement of public-private power. When drawn together, the pope’s comments and principles supply something like an outline for states and communities to use as they go about reconsidering and reforming this influential institution. Private property—the laws and norms that govern property rights—prescribes the rules on who can use nature, in what ways, and with what limitations and obligations. Inevitably, the institution underlies and intertwines with the environmental declines, grave inequalities, and human suffering that Laudato Si’ so passionately decries.
