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The breadth and originality of the pope’s message is distorted by contemporary blinkers about Christianity, writes JOHN WATERS

IN RECENT days I have read a number of reports about the third encyclical of Pope Benedict XVI, all of which treated the pope as they would a philosopher, or political leader, who had delivered a warning to society about the need to mend itself. Inevitably, perhaps, reports of the encyclical’s contents tended to suggest the pope had “attacked” this or that – materialism, capitalism, ideology. Nowhere in the reportage I encountered did the meaning of the title, Caritas in Veritate (Charity in Truth), come across.