Argentina: Church calls for social pact to help 16 million in poverty

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Source: Fides

Argentina's new president, Alberto Fernández, takes office on Tuesday, 10 December. A week after his inauguration, the Catholic Bishops' Commission for social pastoral care plan to approach the president to ask for a social pact to deal with poverty in the country,

The Commission presided over by Mgr Jorge Rubén Lugones SJ, Bishop of Lomas de Zamora, met last Wednesday with representatives of the 'Mesa de dialogue por el trabajo y la vida digna' (Table of dialogue for work and dignified life), an association that includes the main sectors of work, production and social economy.

The meeting was attended by industrialists, workers, and members of the social economy and cooperative sector. All present said the work of the Commission was important, bringing people together in a meeting space, and facilitating dialogue and proposals, to help everyone work together to cope with the enormous economic and social crisis in the country.

The meeting addressed the difficult situation of democratic institutions in Argentina and highlighted the importance of coordinating the network created around the Mesa. In conclusion, the representatives of Bishops' Conference proposed to develop and formalise a social pact to assist the poorest.

The meeting has taken place at a very difficult time for Argentina. In the third quarter of 2019 40.8% of the population was classified as poor, according to the Social Debt Observatory of the Catholic University of Argentina (UCA) - an increase of 8.9% on the last quarter.

These are the highest percentages recorded in Argentina in the last decade. "The last year of management of outgoing President Maurizio Macri closed with 2.8 million new poor", reported the daily newspaper Financiero, a specialist financial newspaper.

The UCA report notes that the reasons for the increase in poverty is due to the economic crisis, which has worsened this year, with a new devaluation, an inflation that will close 2019 around 54%, in addition to the fall in wages and to recession.

A significant point in the study of UCA revealed an increase in poverty in the Argentine middle class, which has grown a lot over the last two years. In 2017 it was 4.9%, rising to 8.1% the following year and almost doubled in 2019, reaching 14.2%.