On Jan. 16, Mark Carney launched his campaign for the leadership of the Liberal Party. If successful, the former Governor of the Bank of Canada would become the 11th Catholic prime minister of Canada.

His Catholic 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 as governor of 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.”

Now back in Canada, his Catholicism plays a negligible role in the discussion of his eligibility for the nation’s premier political post. Given that every Canadian prime minister, apart from Kim Campbell and Stephen Harper, since 1968 has been Catholic, the lack of interest in his churchmanship is hardly surprising.

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What draws more attention is the prominent role Carney has taken on multiple international committees and policy-shaping initiatives since leaving the Bank of England in 2020. 

If ever there was a man who fit the profile of the Samuel P. Huntington-coined phrase “Davos Man,” it is Carney. (Davos Man is a term that describes a wealthy global “elite” who prioritizes their own interests over the common good and often describes people who attend the World Economic Forum, or WEF, in Davos). His Wikipedia page reads as a 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, but there is one transnational non-profit organization with which Carney is involved that entirely escapes mention by the secular press, and even his Wiki page. It is an involvement that is potentially instructive to both the nature of his Catholicism and his understanding of the power of the market as a force of change.

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. 

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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.”

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. 

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

In the nearly 50 years that Catholics from Pierre Elliott Trudeau through to his son Justin have led Canada, the country has emerged as one of the most socially progressive and anti-Catholic countries of the G7. Carney is undoubtedly a Catholic of a different stripe than the Trudeaus and all the prime ministers who came between. The success of his leadership bid is uncertain and a quick election may ensure that whoever emerges as Liberal leader has an even shorter tenure than Campbell’s, 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.