South Africa’s Religious Leaders Call for Cancellation of “unsustainable, unjust” Public Debts Ahead of G20 Summit

Johannesburg, 04 November, 2025 / 4:21 PM

Religious leaders in South Africa are appealing to global leaders attending the November 22–23 Group of 20 (G20) Summit to take decisive action and unconditionally end the debt crisis burdening developing nations, especially those in Africa.

In their Monday, November 3, joint petition, the religious leaders, who included representatives of the South Africa Catholic Bishops Conference (SACBC), expressed concern that “unsustainable and unjust public debts” continue to lock generations in developing countries “into cycles of poverty and inequality.”

“Currently, poor countries spend more than 40 percent of their budgets repaying debt,” the faith leaders said in the petition that SACBC signed together with leaders of the South African Council of Churches (SACC), Lutheran Communion of Southern Africa (LCSA), Fellowship of Christian Councils in Southern Africa (FOCCISA), and United Ulama Council of South Africa (UUCSA).

They cautioned that the debt burden “strips nations of the resources needed to invest in health, education, nature and climate action, and the future of their young people.” 

“Pope Francis reminds us that ‘hope should be granted to the billions of the poor who often lack the essentials of life’ and that ‘the goods of the Earth are not destined for a privileged few but for everyone’,” the religious leaders said, citing the late Holy Father’s May 2024 Bull of Indiction of the Ordinary Jubilee of the Year 2025 Spes Non Confundit.

The religious leaders said they were inspired by the late Pope Francis’ call and by the spirit of the Catholic Church’s 2025 Jubilee Year, which he officially inaugurated on Christmas Eve 2024, “to demand debt forgiveness for communities crushed by unpayable debts.”

“If we really wish to prepare a path to peace in our world, we must commit ourselves to remedying the remote causes of injustice, settling unjust and unpayable debts,” they said in the joint appeal they named “Jubilee 2025: Petition to G20.”

They called on “global leaders meeting in the G20, the G7, the United Nations, the IMF, and the World Bank” to cancel and broaden debt relief for nations whose debts cannot be paid without harming their people or the planet, and to do so without imposing harsh conditions.

The religious leaders further demanded preventive measures, including tackling the underlying causes of debt crises, to protect affected countries from falling into similar debt traps in the future.

They emphasized that those attending the G20 Summit must also commit to upholding responsible lending and borrowing practices, ensuring greater budget transparency, and promoting “financial policies and agreements that protect the vulnerable and our planet.”

They called for the establishment of “a permanent, transparent, rules-based, and comprehensive debt framework through global inclusive negotiations involving all stakeholders.”

Meanwhile, South Africa’s Minister for International Relations and Cooperation, who received the petition on behalf of the government, assured the religious leaders that their petition would be taken into account “as part of South Africa’s G20 Presidency negotiations and in drafting the final declaration for the data summit in Johannesburg in November.”

“We have just received the report of Jubilee from all faith-based organizations in South Africa, and also with their international partners, inputting into South Africa's G20 Presidency, supporting the theme of the South Africa's G20 Presidency, including its ambitions and the impact that it must have on the global South,” said Ronal Lamola in a video report the SACBC published on November 3.

The minister commended the religious leaders for bringing forward the issues they would like to “see finding expression in South Africa’s G20 Presidency.” 

These include, he said, “the use of critical minerals for the benefit of industrialization on the continent, or at the source, and the transformation of the global financial architecture to better respond to the crisis and the challenges of many debt-affected countries, so that financing is used more for development and not just for servicing debt.”

The video report also featured the SACBC Associate Secretary General, Sr. Dominica Mkhize, who welcomed South African religious leaders for taking what she described as “a very important step” in petitioning world leaders to end the debt crisis.

“The sins of the forefathers shouldn’t be passed on to their children,” the member of the Daughters of St. Francis of Assisi (FSF) said, adding that cancelling the debts would secure for future generations on the continent “a liberated Africa.”