Loan sharks reflect 'corruption of the human heart,' pope says

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — When the pursuit of profit rules, people become objects to be exploited, and humanity loses its soul, Pope Leo XIV said.

The practice of usury — lending money at exorbitantly high interest rates — “points to the corruption of the human heart,” the pope told members of an Italian association dedicated to fighting usury and loan sharking.

“It is a grave sin, at times very grave,” he told the delegation at the Vatican Oct. 18, because “usury can bring crisis to families, it can wear down the mind and heart to the point of leading people to think of suicide as the only way out.”

The association, the St. John Paul II National Anti-Usury Council, was celebrating the 30th anniversary of its founding; in cooperation with government and church entities, it seeks to assist victims and promote social justice and a “lawful” economy.

Pope Leo said, “When the pursuit of profit prevails, others are no longer people, they no longer have a face, they are just objects to be exploited; and so we end up losing ourselves and our souls.”

“The conversion of those who engage in usury is just as important as closeness to those who suffer from usury,” he added.

Usury can seem “to want to help those in financial difficulty,” he said, but it soon shows itself to be nothing but “a suffocating burden.”

Those caught up in the snares of usury are often “fragile people,” he said, such as people with a gambling addiction or those facing extraordinary medical costs or “unexpected expenses beyond their means or those of their families.”

“What first presents itself as a helping hand in reality becomes, in the long run, a torment,” the pope said.

Nations, not just individuals and networks, can also engage in exploitative lending practices, he said. “Usurious financial systems can bring entire peoples to their knees” and “fuel structures of iniquitous sin.”

Quoting from his first apostolic exhortation, “Dilexi Te” (“I Have Loved You”) on care for the poor, Pope Leo said, “Does this mean that the less gifted are not human beings? Or that the weak do not have the same dignity as ourselves? Are those born with fewer opportunities of lesser value as human beings? Should they limit themselves merely to surviving?”

“The worth of our societies, and our own future, depends on the answers we give to these questions. Either we regain our moral and spiritual dignity or we fall into a cesspool,” he said, quoting from the document.