Pope warns against imposing debt burden on ordinary people

Pope Francis, the Argentine head of the Catholic Church, on Wednesday warned governments struggling with debt not to impose upon their populations “deprivations incompatible with human rights”.

“After a poorly managed globalisation, after the pandemic and the wars, we find ourselves facing a debt crisis that affects mainly countries in the south of the planet,” the 87-year-old said in Spanish during a Vatican meeting on debt in the Global South.

This was “generating misery and anguish and depriving millions of people of the possibility of a decent future”, he said.

“Consequently, no government can morally demand that its people suffer deprivations incompatible with human dignity,” he said, without naming any specific country.

He called for a new multinational mechanism offering “shared responsibility” between those who grant funding and those who receive it, and taking into account the economic, financial and social implications of debt.

“The absence of this mechanism favours a situation of ‘every man for himself’, where the weakest always lose,” he said.

The pontiff’s home country of Argentina has suffered decades of economic instability marked by debt and inflation that have brought its population to its knees.

President Javier Milei took office in December vowing to halt the decline and to slash public spending.

New data this week found that more than half of Argentines now live in poverty, with levels rising non-stop since a year ago and quickening since Milei took office.

All economic indicators are pointing to a crushing impact on the population of Milei’s austerity measures, with falling employment and annual inflation exceeding 200 percent.

Pope Francis, who became head of the Catholic Church in 2013, regularly calls for the cancellation of debt for the poorest countries, citing the need for social justice and solidarity.