In Argentina, Pope Leo Tells President Milei Economy Must Serve the Needy

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina — The Catholic priests were reciting the Lord’s Prayer last May during an anti-government protest when clashes broke out with police. As one cleric tried to reach a fellow priest dragged behind the armored police cordon, an officer in riot gear grabbed his white tunic.

“This government is heartless,” the priest, Jorge Romero, said in a later interview. “We have to fight,” said the other, Francisco Olveira, known as Paco.

The clash between police and activist clergy members outside Argentina’s Congress in Buenos Aires was a violent flash point in prolonged tensions between President Javier Milei and much of the country’s Roman Catholic Church.

Pope Leo XIV landed in Argentina on Sunday as part of a 12-day South American tour that includes Uruguay and Peru. The Argentina visit places him at the center of that uneasy standoff with Milei, a libertarian economist who has repeatedly attacked the concepts of social justice to which much of the country’s Catholic clergy is deeply committed.

The pontiff met with Milei at the presidential palace in the afternoon, then addressed him along with diplomats and civic leaders in an auditorium. Leo implored them to “acknowledge the limits of the power entrusted to them, and to direct their decisions toward the good of the entire community.”

He reminded them to serve the needs of the unemployed, retirees and workers who struggle to make ends meet saying, “The economy must be at the service of the person, not the person in the service of the economy.” The auditorium exploded repeatedly in applause.

In his speech, Milei defended his economic policies. He said that “the visit of His Holiness Pope Leo XIV rises above fleeting differences and divisions.”

Leo’s predecessor, Pope Francis, was from Argentina but never returned to his home country, a decision many saw as an effort to avoid being dragged into “la grieta” — the nation’s famously bitter political divide.

Leo, an American, does not have the same national baggage as Francis. But still, Milei has diametrically opposed views on issues such as artificial intelligence, and he often describes his presidency as a moral mission — putting him in territory traditionally claimed by the church.

Milei has often talked in messianic and biblical terms, cast himself as Aaron and his sister, Karina, as Moses, and called on the “forces of heaven” to accompany him. He has praised capitalism as not only efficient but moral, while dismissing any wealth redistribution as immoral, and he has said political views opposed to his are violations of the Ten Commandments.

So Argentina’s Catholic Church has emerged not only as a champion of some groups hurt by Milei’s policies but as a moral counterweight to his vision of a rules-free society.

“We cannot keep silent about what the Lord asks of us,” said Monsignor Marcelo Colombo, the head of Argentina’s bishops conference. “To take responsibility for the vulnerable ones and not wash our hands of them,” he added.

The Catholic Church remains a powerful institution in Argentina, even as its flock has been shrinking, with 58% of adults identifying as Catholic in a 2024 Pew Research Center survey.

Milei, a Catholic who has shown public devotion to Judaism and evangelical sympathies, has expressed enthusiasm about the papal visit. He often casts himself as a defender of Judeo-Christian traditions and is aligned with the church in opposing abortion.

But Milei and Catholic leaders are fundamentally at odds over the Catholic concept of social justice.

The concept, a 19th-century response to the stark inequalities of the Industrial Revolution, promoted a fair distribution of wealth and was later incorporated into church teachings to counter individualism and unbridled capitalism. In Argentina, it is tightly associated with Peronism, the populist movement that made social justice a defining banner.

In his 2020 encyclical Fratelli Tutti, Francis made the case for social justice, equality and labor rights, criticizing laissez faire economic theory.

Milei, by contrast, is an eager disciple of that theory. Elected in 2023 on vows to fix a broken economy, he has expressed an unyielding faith in market meritocracy and called social justice “theft” and “a horrible, impoverishing monster.” He once described Francis as a “representative of the evil on earth” for promoting it.

That has put him in direct confrontation with much of Argentina’s Catholic Church — where many bishops were appointed by Francis.

“It’s a vision at the absolute polar opposite of the Christian message,” said Olveira, one of the priests who clashed with police in May, and lives in a slum in Buenos Aires province.

Milei declined to comment for this article.

Drawing on a long Latin American tradition of a clergy committed to freeing marginalized people from poverty and injustice, much of the Argentine church is deeply engaged in grassroots work. “Curas villeros,” or “slum priests,” live in impoverished areas, running soup kitchens, community centers and youth programs.

While Milei has managed to stabilize the economy, rein in runaway inflation and lower the poverty rate, deep government spending cuts have hit some vulnerable Argentines, particularly low-income retirees and people with disabilities.

For many priests who work with those groups, Leo’s visit has been an opportunity to call attention to their plight. Last month, Milei’s administration supported new legislation to restore funding and protections for people with disabilities, after months of fiercely opposing similar measures — an unexpected reversal that analysts linked to the papal visit.

In Argentina, Leo is scheduled to visit a prison and a facility for people with severe disabilities and to meet with workers at a Catholic university, signaling his support for the kinds of communities recently hit by Milei’s policies.

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“The pope isn’t going to march with the pensioners and get tear-gassed like Paco,” said Romero, referring to Olveira. “But the message is the same.”

Romero and Olveira are part of the “Priests in the Option for the Poor,” a vocally political group that participates in marches and protests.

Accused by Milei’s allies of being too tightly aligned with Peronism, which now sits in the political opposition, priests like them respond that they are simply spreading Jesus’ message.

“It’s about the Gospel,” said Romero, a construction worker who wore his white tunic when he clashed with police in May but who is more often seen in shorts and a Diego Maradona T-shirt in Ciudad Oculta, an informal settlement in Buenos Aires where he lives.

Olveira, who wore a Palestinian kaffiyeh during a recent interview in Isla Maciel, a poor neighborhood in Buenos Aires where he runs a foundation, is firmly to the left of even the church’s most liberal currents. He has been repeatedly detained by police during protests and said that following Milei was “a mortal sin.”

Not all clergy members have opposed Milei. Some priests are close to Argentina’s military and the government, and some Passionist nuns said they supported him to bring change after a Peronist government that oversaw skyrocketing inflation and that they saw as corrupt.

Still, the higher ranks of the Argentine Catholic hierarchy have directly opposed some of Milei’s policies.

The Argentine bishops conference has openly criticized his cuts to disability subsidies, and bills that would make it easier for foreigners to buy Argentine land. It has said that the state’s withdrawal from poorer areas was enabling the expansion of a “parallel state” led by organized crime.

In a homily this year, the archbishop of Buenos Aires, Jorge García Cuerva, vocally defended people with disabilities and informal workers, in what was widely interpreted as a direct rebuttal to Milei’s policies.

In Villa 21, a slum in Buenos Aires, the Rev. Lorenzo de Vedia recently hung a banner that read “Pope Leo is social justice” outside his church. “In this era where the message is one of individualism, selfishness and meritocracy,” he said, “the church has a lot to say.”