Vatican Calls for Global Market Watchdog

Occupy Wall Street protesters may be a little surprised to learn that the Vatican supports some of their goals. A document released by the Vatican's Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace calls for the creation of a world body to police financial markets in order to to crack down on rampant capitalism and reduce inequality, the Guardian reports.

A central world bank would restore "the primacy of the spiritual and of ethics" and promote the common good over the needs of the financial industry, the document states, claiming that the International Monetary Fund is no longer up to the job of stabilizing global economies. The document quotes Pope John Paul II's lament about the "idolatry of the market" and stresses that its recommendations are built on existing church teachings. (More financial institutions stories.)