The Argentine pontiff called on banks to issue more credit to people “in difficulty” and renewed his call on rich countries to cancel debt.
Pope Francis, December 15, 2024, in Corsica ( AFP / TIZIANA FABI )
Relocations, movement of resources, speculation: Pope Francis castigated Monday in front of representatives of Italian banks the excesses of a finance which “tramples people”, renewing his calls for the erasure of the debt.
“When finance tramples on people, foments inequalities and moves away from local life,
it betrays its reason for being. It becomes an uncivilized economy”,
regretted the Pope during a speech at the Vatican before delegations from three Italian banking institutions.
Investments that “encourage wars”
Francis, who regularly defends more equitable access to wealth, also attacked
“multinationals that move their businesses
to places where it is easier to exploit labor, putting families and communities in difficulty.”
“Sound finance does not degenerate into usurious attitudes, pure speculation and investments that harm the environment and encourage wars,” added the Argentine Jesuit, who will turn 88 on Tuesday.
A tireless slayer of the excesses of capitalism, Jorge Bergoglio called on banks to issue more credit to people “in difficulty” and renewed his call on rich countries to cancel debt on the occasion of the jubilee year of 2025.
Pope Francis, witness in particular to the Argentine economic crisis and the exploitation of the poorest treated as “waste”, regularly denounces a virtual financial economy that destroys jobs. To the point of being accused of Marxist ideas, which he refutes. In 2018, the Vatican published a text dissecting and precisely criticizing a global financial system deemed generally amoral, from derivatives to subprime mortgages and the offshore economy.
