By Joseph Tulloch
3.3 billion people or nearly half the world’s population live in countries that spend more money on debt than on healthcare.
That was one of the more shocking statistics to emerge from a recent online town hall organised by Caritas Internationalis, the charitable arm of the Catholic Church.
Held on Wednesday, the webinar brought together more than 200 individuals: humanitarian workers, internationally-recognised economists, and senior Vatican officials to discuss debt, climate, and development.
‘Turn debt into hope’
Alastair Dutton, Caritas’ Secretary-General, introduced the discussion. He suggested that the fact that so many countries spend more on servicing their debt than on healthcare and education shows that, in today’s economy, human beings are secondary “to economic interest”.
Dutton also highlighted that the subject of debt reform has already been raised by Pope Leo, just weeks into his pontificate. The topic was also seen as crucial, the Caritas chief noted, by the late Pope Francis who, in 2024, called for a “multinational mechanism” to manage debt between countries, avoiding an “every man for himself” mentality in which “it is always the weakest” who lose out.
In his remarks, Dutton highlighted Caritas’ Turn Debt Into Hope campaign, which calls for the forgiveness of unjust debt.
The aim of the campaign as Caritas officer Alfonso Apicella explained is to build public pressure around unfair debt practises, particularly in view of the Catholic Church’s ongoing 2025 Jubilee Year, a period traditionally associated with financial clemency.
“There are 1.4 billion Catholics in the world,” Apicella said, “and we want to show that they have agency.”
The impact of the debt system
Among the other speakers at the event was Professor Martin Guzmán of Columbia University, a former Argentinian Minister of Economy.
Professor Guzmán highlighted the devastating effects of the global debt system on the world’s poorest countries, which, he said, are charged higher interest rates than their richer peers. He also discussed the work of the Vatican’s Jubilee Commission of Experts, chaired by the Nobel-prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, which is producing a report on debt and development crises in the Global South.
Meanwhile, Sister Alessandra Smerilli, Secretary of the Holy See’s Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, highlighted Pope Francis’ notion of the ‘ecological debt’ owed by rich countries towards the poorer countries which are suffering the effects of a climate crisis which they have contributed much less to causing.
This was a topic also touched on by Archbishop Gabriele Caccia, Permanent Observer of the Holy See to the United Nations, who noted that the concept of ecological debt was also highlighted by Pope Francis in his Bull of Indiction for the Jubilee Year.
Archbishop Caccia stressed the importance of clearly communicating the impact of the debt system on poor countries. “It’s not just a technical matter of economics,” he said, but “a clear hindrance to integral human development.” – Vatican News
