A ground-breaking new report, authored by the Pope Francis’ Jubilee Commission calls for urgent action and systemic reforms to tackle the escalating debt and development crises affecting billions, including African in particular, worldwide.
The Jubilee Report: A Blueprint for Tackling the Debt and Development Crises and Creating the Financial Foundations for a Sustainable People-Centered Global Economy,” written by the Pope Francis’ Jubilee Commission — a group of over 30 leading global experts led by Nobel laureate and Columbia University Professor Joseph Stiglitz and former Minister of the Economy of Argentina and Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs Professor Martín Guzmán, was released on 20th June 2025.
The report follows Pope Francis’ repeated calls for global debt relief, which are now being carried forward by Pope Leo XIV, and brings together for the first time a combination of sound economic expertise with the moral responsibility to act.
The report powerfully shows that the debt crisis plaguing our global financial system is also fuelling a development crisis. Fifty-four developing countries now spend 10% or more of their tax revenues just on interest payments. Across the developing world, average interest burdens have nearly doubled in the past decade.
This diverts resources away from essential investments in health, education, infrastructure, and climate resilience — depriving millions of life-saving care, nutrition and employment.
This does not have to be the case: Solutions exist that are both economically sound and beneficial to all.
As global market uncertainty grows and refinancing options diminish for debt-distressed nations, this report charts a bold and practical path forward, arguing that, through shared responsibility, we can avoid a lost decade for development and climate action and instead support economic recovery and long-term development.
The report presents a moral and practical vision: that global finance should serve people and the planet —not punish the poor to protect profits. Recommendations include:
- Improve debt restructuring: Change multilateral institution policies and legislation in key jurisdictions (New York State and England) so that creditors and debtor governments are newly incentivized to agree to more timely and sustainable debt restructurings.
- End bailouts to private creditors: Multilateral institutions including the International Monetary Fund should change their policies and practices to support sustainable recoveries, not de facto bailouts of private creditors or crippling austerity.
- Strengthen domestic policies: Developing countries should more extensively use capital account regulations to discourage destabilising flows and create a more stable environment for long-term investments and should invest in structural transformation.
- Enhance transparency: All should support financial policies that are transparent and have broad societal support.
- Reimagine global finance: All should support a comprehensive change in global financing models to drive financing for sustainable development, including lending that supports long-term growth.
The report’s findings will be discussed at the 4th International Conference on Financing for Development in Seville, Spain, June 30-July 3, and at key global gatherings where the global debt and development crises will be high on the agenda, including the United Nations General Assembly in New York City in September and the G20 Summit in Johannesburg, South Africa, in November.
Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz (commissioned by Pope Francis to co-lead on the report) says: “There is growing consensus among experts that the current debt system serves financial markets, not people. This threatens to condemn entire nations to a lost decade — or worse. Now is the time for responsible action.”
Minister of Economy for Argentina (2019-2022) Martín Guzmán (commissioned by Pope Francis to co-lead on the report) says: “The debt crisis is crowding out investments in health, education, and climate and is making the economic and social situation dramatic in many developing economies. Pope Francis’ call was a moral act of timely leadership. In this Jubilee year, a coalition of the willing must act to tackle the debt and development crises or else inequality of opportunity will rise and instability will spiral with worldwide medium-term destabilising consequences.”
Pope Leo XIV declared at his inauguration on 18 May 2025: “In this our time, we still see too much discord, too many wounds caused by hatred, violence, prejudice, the fear of difference, and an economic paradigm that exploits the Earth’s resources and marginalises the poorest.”
