Pope Francis and the Path to a Just Economy | By Martín Guzmán & Joseph E. Stiglitz | With the passing of Pope Francis, the world has lost an extraordinary leader. But his legacy will endure – not only in the hearts of those he inspired, but in the concrete efforts he set in motion to build a more just, humane, and sustainable global economy.
Born Jorge Bergoglio in Argentina, Pope Francis knew firsthand the cruelty of economic injustice. He came of age in one of the world’s most volatile economies – a country where repeated economic and foreign-debt crises cast long shadows over generations of children and families. He saw what happens when economic systems serve vested interests rather than the people: high inequality, broken communities, and widespread social ills like crime, addiction, and insecurity.
As pope, Francis brought those insights to the global stage. His voice became one of the most powerful moral forces in the world, not only reminding us of our shared humanity but also challenging the institutional structures that deny dignity to billions of people. As members of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences in the Vatican, we had the privilege and pleasure of maintaining a frequent dialogue with him.
His concern was urgent and grounded in lived reality. “Transforming reality requires action on the ground – not only work in the lab,” he used to say in private.
Francis saw an economic system that too often prioritized profit over people, and selfishness over cooperation. He knew that while markets can be a powerful tool, markets unbound by appropriate rules and regulations would produce injustice on a planetary scale, including the gravest injustice of all: the destruction of our environment, which he called “our common home” in his encyclical Laudato Si’. Without a moral compass and a sense of solidarity, markets, rather than being a source of wealth creation, could be a powerful force of wealth extraction, leading to an ever-greater concentration of income and wealth.
Francis did not hesitate to speak out. He criticized global rules that privileged monopolies, particularly in the area of intellectual property, where protections designed to reward invention often obstruct access to life-saving technologies. During the COVID-19 pandemic, he personally urged US President Joe Biden to support a waiver of IP rights under the World Trade Organization’s TRIPS agreement, so that people everywhere could access vaccines. His message was clear: human lives must take precedence over corporate profits.
Likewise, Francis was deeply concerned that many developing countries were trapped in a sovereign-debt cycle that constrained their ability to invest in health, education, and infrastructure. He saw, correctly, that this was not just a debt crisis, but also a development crisis and, more profoundly, a symptom of an economic system that had lost its moral bearings. And he understood that all parts of the system were responsible – the governments of both debtor and creditor countries, the private lenders, and the international financial architecture that enabled and even incentivized governments and creditors to delay needed restructurings.
That is why Francis asked us last year to create a Jubilee Commission to convene leading thinkers to propose how the world might address the deepening crisis of debt and development. He understood that the Jubilee in 2000, as important as it was to those living in debt-distressed countries, had made only limited progress on creating more fiscal space for those struggling with the challenges of development. Twenty-five years later, with even more countries facing debt distress, Francis wanted to do something for these countries immediately. But his ambition was greater. He asked how we might prevent a repeat of the failure of the past. His call echoed the ancient Biblical tradition of the Jubilee: a time for forgiveness of debts and restoration of balance – not as charity, but as justice.
Until his final days, Francis followed the Jubilee Commission’s work closely. He was especially concerned that multilateral institutions – designed to safeguard global stability and promote shared development – were acting as agents of inertia, without the solidarity needed to uphold peace, prosperity, and justice.
The Jubilee Commission will present its report at the Vatican this summer. Its recommendations will reflect the urgent need to reform the incentives that have locked so many countries in crisis. Debtor governments must act quickly, without delay, with vision and responsibility toward their citizens. Creditor countries must act quickly, too, again with vision and a sense of moral responsibility and solidarity. Multilateral institutions must stop using public resources to shield bad lending decisions and unsustainable debt. And creditors must accept their share of responsibility. The high interest rates they charge come with risks, and when those risks materialize, they must not be offloaded onto the world’s taxpayers.
With moral clarity and courage, Francis challenged us to imagine new financial rules that would no longer serve the few, but rather uplift the many. He reminded us that economics is about people, about dignity, and about our collective future. We hope the Commission’s work will honor Francis’s legacy and contribute to the creation of more just societies. There can be no better tribute to his legacy than to establish a framework for international finance with that goal in mind.
Martín Guzmán, a former minister of economy of Argentina, is a professor at the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University. Joseph E. Stiglitz, a former chief economist of the World Bank and former chair of the US President’s Council of Economic Advisers, is University Professor at Columbia University, a Nobel laureate in economics, and the author, most recently, of The Road to Freedom: Economics and the Good Society (W. W. Norton & Company, Allen Lane, 2024).
Pope Francis and the Path to a Just Economy | Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2025 | www.project-syndicate.org
