Pope Leo XIV arrived in Buenos Aires on Sunday on the first visit by a pope to Argentina in nearly 40 years, and used his first public speech in the country to take on President Javier Milei’s agenda without naming him — telling Argentina’s leaders to their faces: “The economy must serve the person, not the person the economy.”
Speaking to officials, diplomats and civic leaders on his arrival from Uruguay, the Chicago-born pope set out a vision of governance, democracy and society sharply at odds with Milei’s austerity programme. Democracy, he said, depends on “careful use of words” and on the ability to see those who think differently as “fellow citizens with whom we share a common future.”
Leo did not attack private enterprise — he urged Argentina to encourage “whatever creates opportunities” and “stimulates private initiative.” But he insisted growth must also benefit “those who are disadvantaged,” naming the unemployed, retirees and “all those who, despite hard work, nonetheless struggle to meet their household’s needs.”
The backdrop is Milei’s chainsaw economics: his spending cuts have produced a rare budget surplus and brought annual inflation down from about 200% to about 32%, but real wages are still below where they stood when he took office in late 2023, roughly 300,000 formal jobs have disappeared, and retirees living on an average monthly pension of about $510 have protested outside Congress every week for more than two years.
Milei’s government had played down the prospect of a clash before the visit — Human Capital Minister Sandra Pettovello said there was “no way the pope is coming here to comment on local politics” — and Milei struck a rare conciliatory tone at the welcome ceremony. He paid homage to the late Pope Francis, an Argentine he once attacked in the harshest terms, calling him an “exceptional figure” and “undoubtedly the most important Argentine in history,” and told the gathering: “There are causes and occasions that transcend our differences.”
Leo also took up the cause of Argentina’s public universities, a source of national pride whose funding has been cut by about 40% since 2023. Giving young people a future in Argentina means “investing in education, vocational training, universities and research,” he said, adding: “A nation must seriously ask itself where it has failed when its young people have to leave their homeland in order to make their dreams come true.” He warned as well that Argentina’s natural resources must serve “the well-being of communities,” and that rapid advances in artificial intelligence demand “careful consideration of the consequences of their application and the responsibilities of those who decide how to use them.”
The message travels far beyond Buenos Aires. Milei is one of the Trump administration’s closest allies in South America, and his war on waste and bureaucracy mirrors the one being waged in Washington — so when the first American-born pope tells Argentina’s leaders, on the most politically delicate stop of his three-nation tour, that economic growth has to reach working families, retirees and the unemployed, it speaks directly to the same argument Americans are having at home. His case for ordinary citizens is a simple one: an economy is only working when the people who work can meet their household’s needs, when their children can study and build a future in their own country, and when growth lifts the disadvantaged instead of leaving them behind.
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