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Pope John Paul II was different from his immediate predecessors in being a much stronger and more direct critic of the affluent societies. He was also much more concerned with problems of poverty in the Third World, which he blamed in his public statements largely on materialistic capitalism and the West’s greed and lack of concern for the poor. He also saw the future of the Catholic Church to be in the Third World and nominated more bishops from non-Western nations than all of his predecessors combined. Signs that the Catholic clergy in some of these nations may not have been ready to follow and implement his non-violent message, as it happened in mostly Catholic Rwanda where the world saw the largest genocide in recent history, had not deterred John Paul II from following his course of trying to move the center of Catholicism from Europe to the developing world.

John Paul II would most likely argue in defense of his choice of favoring the Third World that Jesus Christ’s message was clearly in favor of the poor. He wanted the Catholic Church to be truly universal, as the term “catholic” implies – not a church that has separate rules, easy ones for the rich countries of the industrialized and computerized North, and strict ones for the poor nations of the South. He believed that he was responsible for the entire Church and must represent the interests of all Catholics and all Catholic women, not only those in the most developed countries. He was convinced that what feminists wanted would be bad not only for women in the West, but particularly for women in the developing world, still uncorrupted by secular and liberal ideas.