By Elissa Miolene // 24 June 2025
Today, the world’s governments are more indebted than ever before — and the international financial system, from multilateral institutions to creditor groups to rating agencies, is only reinforcing that reality. That’s according to a new report commissioned by Pope Francis, the late leader of the Catholic Church. The report calls for a “structural transformation” in the international financial system, and says the world has a “moral obligation” to launch a second Heavily Indebted Poor Countries, or HIPC, Initiative, the first iteration of which was launched in 1996. In…