“No government can demand a disproportionate deprivation of human dignity,” Pope Francis tells participants in a seminar on the global debt crisis

“No government can morally demand that its people suffer deprivations incompatible with human dignity,” Pope Francis said. In a message that was originally written in Spanish and addressed to the participants of an international seminar on the theme “Solutions to the debt crisis in the global South”, an activity promoted by the Vatican’s Pontifical Academy of Sciences, although the brief text, barely more than a page long, does not mention any government or person in particular, it is not difficult to interpret that Bergoglio’s statement also comes at the intersection of the statements of the Argentine president. Xavier Miley, Who said just a few days ago that “if people didn’t have to survive they would already be dead” and that this situation does not require state intervention because “somehow they are going to decide something so as not to die.”

The Pope delivered his speech to a special audience for seminar attendees, who included economists, academics, political and social leaders, and church officials from around the world. Participants include the former Economy Minister, Martín Guzmán, and the former Secretary of Strategic Affairs, Gustavo Belize, who is a member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences..The meeting is being attended by, among others, Nobel Prize winner in Economics Joseph Stiglitz; Carlos Bondi, Economy Minister of Spain; Fernando Haddad, Economy Minister of Brazil and Antoinette Sayeh, Deputy Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund.

The seminar aims to “establish a dialogue on the implementation of policies that help solve the debt problem that affects many countries in the Global South, which affects millions of families and people around the world,” as Bergoglio himself said.

On this occasion, the Pope also extended an invitation to “dream and act together in the responsible construction of our common home” because “One cannot live there with peace of conscience when he knows that around him there are crowds of brothers and sisters who are hungry and suffer from social exclusion and insecurity.“. For Francis, “letting it go is a sin, a human sin, even if one does not have faith, it is a social sin.”

“After poorly managed globalisation, after pandemics and wars, we find ourselves facing a debt crisis that mainly affects the countries of the global South, generating misery and suffering, and depriving millions of people of the possibility of a dignified future,” the pope said.

According to Francisco, “to try to break the financing-debt cycle, it will be necessary to create a multinational mechanism based on the solidarity and goodwill of peoples, who can understand the global meaning of the problem and its economic, financial and social implications.” And he added that “The absence of this mechanism supports ‘every man for himself,’ where the weakest always loses.”

For the Pope, the issue of countries’ debt must be resolved based on “principles of justice and solidarity”, which requires “acting in good faith and truth, following an international code of conduct with standards of value” “that guide the negotiations” and “based on a new international financial architecture that is bold and creative.”

Because, he said, “not only does any form of financing work for people, but it also implies a shared responsibility between those who receive it and those who provide it.” And “the benefits it can bring to a society depend on its conditions, on how it is used and on the frameworks in which the debt crisis that occurs is resolved.”

Francis recalled that John Paul II believed that the issue of foreign debt “is not only economic in nature but affects fundamental moral principles and should have a place in international law” and supported his predecessor’s invitation to “forgive the debts or at least reduce them.”

For Bergoglio, an initiative of this type is “more necessary today than ever, taking into account that “Ecological debt and external debt are two sides of the same coin that mortgage the future.”

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