Abstract

In Fratelli tutti, Pope Francis probes structural and ideological threats to people’s social instincts and shared good in contexts of fragmentation and false securities. His approach to these pervasive temptations to build a culture of walls “in the heart” and “on the land” employs structural analyses but also elevates ideologies abetting the harms these walls wreak, signaling a development in the use of social sin in line with related emerging theological scholarship. This essay traces and contextualizes Francis’s application of interconnected dimensions of social sin in Fratelli tutti; interrogates its oversight of the social sin of sexism; and suggests that practices of encounter and discernment in the pursuit of social friendship serve as apt antidotes to the harmful dynamics identified.