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

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.”

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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.”

Nicholas Waigwa is a Kenyan multimedia journalist and broadcast technician with a professional background in creating engaging news stories and broadcasting content across multiple media platforms. He is passionate about the media apostolate and Catholic Church communication.