Pope rips inequalities in global economy
October 24, 2025
» Continue to this story on Vatican News
CWN Editor's Note: Pope Leo XIV denounced inequalities in the world economy, using unusually strong language, in an October 24 address to the Fifth World Meeting of Popular Movements.
The Pontiff was particularly harsh in his words on the treatment of migrants. “Ever more inhuman measures are being adopted—even celebrated politically—that treat these “undesirables” as if they were garbage and not human beings,” he charged.
The Pope decried “systematic arbitrariousness” in the distribution of wealth, and said that “by not having human dignity at its center, the system fails also in justice.”
In his talk the Pope spoke out against the promotion of a gaudy and expensive lifestyle, the encouragement of online gambling, and the “cult of physical wellbeing, almost an idolatry of the body, in which the mystery of pain is reduced to something totally inhuman.”
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Posted by: feedback -
Oct. 25, 2025 9:57 AM ET USA
With all due respect for the Holy Father, I don't think any migrants who come to the US, or to the Vatican, or to any other country in the world, are ever treated "as if they were garbage and not human beings." All they have to do is to follow the laws of the land. Breaking the law is, and has always been undesirable. Even in the Vatican. https://www.catholicculture.org/news/headlines/index.cfm?storyid=64477
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Posted by: grateful1 -
Oct. 24, 2025 7:36 PM ET USA
Whenever Leo displays his profound, tunnel-visioned ignorance about immigration, I tune him out, to avoid doubting his authority on matters properly within his ken.
