Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Dec 26, 2024 / 14:30 pm
Continuing St. John Paul II’s mission from the 2000 Jubilee, a U.S.-based jubilee network is partnering with international aid organizations to provide debt relief for the world’s poorest countries during the 2025 Jubilee Year.
Representatives from Caritas Internationalis and Jubilee USA Network, a league of faith-based development and debt-relief organizations, announced the five-year campaign, “Turn Debt into Hope,” during a Vatican press conference on Dec. 23, according to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.
Executive Director of Jubilee USA Network Eric LeCompte said during the conference that his organization is launching the effort “to finish the unfinished business of Jubilee 2000, when John Paul II called on the international community to provide debt relief for poor countries,” according to Catholic News Service, the news agency of the U.S. bishops.
Pope Francis also issued a similar appeal during his proclamation of the 2025 Jubilee Year, calling on the world’s wealthiest nations to “acknowledge the gravity of so many of their past decisions and determine to forgive the debts of countries that will never be able to repay them.”
During the conference, LeCompte emphasised the positive effects of John Paul II’s leadership and efforts to help poor countries, revealing that in the past 25 years, “we have won more than $130 billion in debt relief for the world’s poorest countries.”
“In Africa alone,” he said, “that has meant that 54 million children who would never have had the chance to go to school were able to do so.”
Caritas Internationalis Director of Integral Human Development Victor Genina Cervantes explained to the press that the multiyear program would function by rallying public support for its debt-relief advocacy, which seeks to “reform the global financial architecture to prioritize people and the planet.”
Also present at the conference was Cardinal Silvano Tomasi, a retired Vatican diplomat who was involved in early work on debt relief agreements facilitated by the Church.
Tomasi explained that when poor nations continue to accrue national debt, it is individuals and their families who “pay the consequences of unfair conditions placed on the financing.”
Tomasi and LeCompte underscored that their program will not only attempt to advocate debt cancellation but will also seek to establish a universal, transparent, and binding international bankruptcy process geared toward returning poor nations to financial solvency.
Beyond the negative impact that national debt has on the people of poor counties, Cervantes pointed out that “foreign debt is also climate debt.”
“The global community cannot reach its goals for stemming climate change without resolving the debt issue,” he said, “helping poorer countries invest in climate-change mitigation and reduce their burdens when they must rely on international financing to recover from natural disasters caused by climate change.”
Caritas Internationalis has a page dedicated to the “Turn Debt into Hope” campaign, which includes a petition that “calls on public, private, and multilateral creditors, as well as political leaders, to act with courage and compassion.”
