“When finance tramples on people, foments inequalities and distances itself from local life, it betrays its reason for being. This is becoming an uncivilized economy”regretted the Pope during a speech Monday, December 16 at the Vatican before delegations from three Italian banking institutions.
Francis, who regularly defends more equitable access to wealth, also attacked “multinationals moving 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 be 88 years old on Tuesday.
Credits for people in difficulty
A tireless slayer of the excesses of capitalism, Francis called on banks to issue more credit to people “in difficulty” and renewed its call on rich countries to cancel debt in 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.