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It was the first visit by a pope to Argentina in nearly four decades — and Pope Leo XIV did not waste it on pleasantries. Hours after landing in Buenos Aires on Sunday, with President Javier Milei sitting in the audience, the pontiff delivered a direct public challenge to the president's austerity programme, telling a cheering crowd that an economy should work for ordinary people rather than demanding that people serve the economy.
"The economy must be at the service of the people, rather than people being at the service of the economy," Leo said, in a speech met with rapturous applause. For a country bitterly divided over three years of deep spending cuts, it was the sharpest intervention yet by the new pope in the politics of a nation — and it set the tone for a visit many Argentines hope will help heal deep divisions.
A visit three weeks after surgery
According to reports from The Guardian and Malay Mail, Leo, 71, arrived in Buenos Aires on Sunday from Uruguay on the second leg of a 12-day tour of Latin America — his first trip to the region since becoming pope. Argentina is the most politically delicate stop on the tour, and the visit comes just three weeks after the pope underwent surgery for lung cancer. The Church says it expects 7 million people to attend events during the visit.
The trip also carries a weight of history. Leo's predecessor, the Argentine Pope Francis, never returned home during his 12-year pontificate. Leo's arrival is therefore not only a pastoral visit but a homecoming the country waited decades for — and the pope used his first major address on Argentine soil to speak directly to the argument consuming the country.
What the pope actually said
At the heart of Leo's remarks was a defence of people whose work does not earn them enough to live on. He spoke of men and women who labour hard yet still struggle to cover what their households need, and argued that a country could not call its economy a success while such families were left behind. He spoke up for pensioners and for people living with illness, dependency and disability, insisting that particular concern be shown to them — a passage widely understood as a pointed reference to the government's controversial reductions in disability assistance.
He then turned to the health of Argentina's democracy, telling his audience, with Milei present, that strengthening democratic life required a "willingness to listen" and the "careful use of words". The remark landed as a gentle but unmistakable rebuke of a president famous for coarse and insulting public attacks on his critics — and it drew one of the warmest responses of the speech.
Why it stings Milei
Milei, a self-described anarcho-capitalist, has staked his presidency on slashing public spending to tame inflation, describing the notion of social justice as "a horror", a "moral aberration" and "theft". His programme has produced a rare budget surplus and cut annual inflation from 200 percent to about 32 percent — real achievements his supporters cite. But the poverty rate rose to 32.3 percent in September, and the human cost of the cuts has become the central political argument in Argentina.
That is the argument the pope has now joined, from the side of those bearing the cost. Leo did not name Milei, and his words were framed as principle rather than policy. But nobody in Buenos Aires misunderstood them — least of all the president, who listened as the pontiff told him, in effect, that a surplus is not a success if the people it was built on cannot live on what they earn.
The visit continues this week, and the pope's words will echo through a country still arguing over what its economy is for. Leo's answer, delivered to Milei's face, could hardly have been clearer: the economy exists to serve people — not the other way round. Our earlier report on the pope's surgery is here.