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Pope Francis, like his namesake, has attracted considerable attention and admiration for his modest lifestyle – and not only from the usual suspects. The Holy Father "runs an organization as big as any American corporation. Yet he doesn’t demand millions in pay and perks," explained Steelworkers union president Leo Gerard the other day – in the pages of the left-leaning In These Times. "Pope Francis is beloved for his asceticism. He lives in Spartan rooms and drives a 1984 Renault…American CEOs, by contrast, place themselves on $35,000 thrones bought with the sweat of struggling minimum wage workers." Gerard's article constrasting our chief executive with the more familiar kind is entitled "Ending Million-Dollar Pay Packages, Papal-Style."

 Clayton Sinyai is a trade union activist and the author of Schools of Democracy: A Political History of the American Labor Movement (Cornell, 2006). He is a member of the Catholic Labor Network, the American affiliate of the World Movement of Christian Workers. He can be reached at clayton@catholiclabor.org.