"I know that you have been excluded from the benefits of globalization," he wrote on April 12. "You do not enjoy the superficial pleasures that anesthetize so many consciences, yet you always suffer from the harm they produce. The ills that afflict everyone hit you twice as hard."

Pointing to "street vendors, recyclers, carnies, small farmers, construction workers, dressmakers, the different kinds of caregivers" who have "no steady income," Francis said that a universal basic income should be considered.

"This may be the time to consider a universal basic wage which would acknowledge and dignify the noble, essential tasks you carry out. It would ensure and concretely achieve the ideal, at once so human and so Christian, of no worker without rights," he said.

He also said that he hopes that governments begin to understand that "technocratic paradigms" are not set up to address "this crisis or other great problems affecting humankind."