Pope calls for end to foreign debt, death penalty ahead of Jubilee Year

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — Pope Francis has called on all nations to eliminate the death penalty, to divert a fixed percentage of arms spending to a global fund to fight hunger and climate change, and to cancel the international debt of developing nations as concrete ways to usher in a new era of hope.

“Sporadic acts of philanthropy are not enough. Cultural and structural changes are necessary, so that enduring change may come about,” the pope said in his message for World Peace Day 2025.

The message, “Forgive us our trespasses: grant us your peace,” was released Dec. 12 at a Vatican news conference ahead of the Jan. 1 commemoration.

Offering his “cordial good wishes for the New Year to the heads of state and government, to the leaders of international organizations, to the leaders of the various religions and to every person of goodwill,” the pope made three proposals for bringing about “much-needed changes” during the Jubilee Year, which focuses on “Pilgrims of Hope.”

The proposals, he wrote, are “capable of restoring dignity to the lives of entire peoples and enabling them to set out anew on the journey of hope.”

The first proposal, he wrote, is renewing the appeal launched by St. John Paul II for the Holy Year 2000 to consider “reducing substantially, if not canceling outright, the international debt which seriously threatens the future of many nations.”

Foreign debt, Pope Francis wrote, “has become a means of control whereby certain governments and private financial institutions of the richer countries unscrupulously and indiscriminately exploit the human and natural resources of poorer countries, simply to satisfy the demands of their own markets.”

Pope Francis also said wealthier nations must recognize their own “ecological debt” to the global south due to the exploitation of resources, the destruction of ecosystems and the effects of climate change. “The more prosperous countries ought to feel called to do everything possible to forgive the debts of those countries that are in no condition to repay the amount they owe.”

“A new financial framework must be devised, leading to the creation of a global financial charter based on solidarity and harmony between peoples,” he wrote, so that debt forgiveness is not just “an isolated act of charity that simply reboots the vicious cycle of financing and indebtedness.”

The pope’s second proposal is for “a firm commitment” to respecting “the dignity of human life from conception to natural death, so that each person can cherish his or her own life and all may look with hope to a future of prosperity and happiness for themselves and for their children.”

“Without hope for the future, it becomes hard for the young to look forward to bringing new lives into the world,” he wrote. And a “concrete gesture that can help foster the culture of life” is the elimination of the death penalty in all nations.

The death penalty “not only compromises the inviolability of life but eliminates every human hope of forgiveness and rehabilitation,” he wrote.

The pope’s third appeal follows “in the footsteps of St. Paul VI and Benedict XVI,” he wrote. “In this time marked by wars, let us use at least a fixed percentage of the money earmarked for armaments to establish a global fund.”

The fund should finance initiatives “to eradicate hunger” and facilitate educational activities in poor countries to promote sustainable development and combat climate change, he wrote. “We need to work at eliminating every pretext that encourages young people to regard their future as hopeless or dominated by the thirst to avenge the blood of their dear ones.”

Cardinal Michael Czerny, prefect of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, told reporters at the Vatican Dec. 12 that Caritas Internationalis was launching a global campaign called “‘Turn debt into hope’ with a global petition aimed at raising awareness about the systemic change needed.”

The Jubilee Year and the Christian call for conversion are invitations, not “to a moralistic effort at self-improvement, but to a radical change in how we look at reality,” he said.

“Conversion is a path traced by that love for Christ that inspires, transforms, orients, energizes us,” the cardinal said. Faith in the merciful and providential hands of God “frees our hearts from anguish, to respond and to serve.”

Krisanne Vaillancourt Murphy, executive director of Catholic Mobilizing Network, which promotes restorative justice and the end to capital punishment, said “the death penalty’s very existence epitomizes a throwaway culture.”

“Capital punishment is a ‘structural sin’ existing in at least 55 nations across the globe, where nearly 28,000 people find themselves on death row,” she told reporters, adding that this number “does not include cases in countries where there are no official statistics reported.”

In the United States, in addition to the federal death penalty, “27 of the 50 states have the death penalty,” she said.

Also speaking at the news conference was Vito Alfieri Fontana, an engineer who worked at Italian companies producing grenades and anti-tank and anti-personnel mines.

He said he experienced a personal conversion and began working for the International Campaign to Ban Landmines after his children kept asking about what he did and why, and amid growing public opposition to the use of anti-personnel mines and the promptings of the late Father Tonino Bello to reflect on his life.

“What for me had been normal, became a burden,” he said. He was able to emerge from “a privileged bubble — home to 1% of the population who produce, control and distribute arms” — and enter into the world of the 99% — those who do not want war and want to live in peace.

Pope Francis said in his message that the jubilee tradition is meant to remind all people, “rich and poor alike, that no one comes into this world doomed to oppression: all of us are brothers and sisters, sons and daughters of the same Father, born to live in freedom, in accordance with the Lord’s will.”

Christians “feel bound to cry out and denounce the many situations in which the earth is exploited and our neighbors oppressed,” he wrote.

Calling for and implementing concrete solutions to systemic injustice is part of the Christian desire to “break the bonds of injustice and to proclaim God’s justice,” he added.

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