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CTV News
7 hours ago
- Business
- CTV News
Cardinal with close ties to Pope Leo XIV travels to Canada to support peaceful G7 activists
A Peruvian cardinal who worked closely with Pope Leo XIV for years will be stopping in Calgary to support peaceful demonstrators as world leaders gather next week for the G7 summit in Alberta. Cardinal Pedro Ricardo Barreto Jimeno, 81, hopes to help draw attention to what he calls an 'ecological debt' crisis. While Barreto doesn't plan to join protests, he said he will be supporting peaceful activists' call for change. According to Barreto and organizers from Development and Peace ― Caritas Canada, the group that invited the cardinal to Canada, ecological debt refers to the debt owed to poorer nations and Indigenous communities resulting from damage caused by some companies from developed countries like Canada. This damage includes oil spills and pollution from mines. Development and Peace ― Caritas Canada, the official humanitarian aid agency of the Canadian Catholic Church, invited the cardinal to support peaceful activists in their campaign to call on G7 world leaders to prioritize the protection of the planet and poor communities. Ahead of a speech before dozens of people at Our Lady of Lourdes Parish in Toronto on Monday, Barreto spoke with through an interpreter about ecological debt. 'It's a very large injustice that the World Bank recognizes,' the Spanish-speaking cardinal said. He pointed to a World Bank 2023 debt report that found developing countries spent a record US$1.4 trillion servicing their foreign debt, as interest costs soared to a 20-year high of $406 billion. For many countries, this move would cut budgets in areas such as health and education. Barreto hopes developed countries like Canada will recognize their ecological debt to poorer countries. He and other environmental advocates are calling on Canada and other countries to cancel 'unjust and unsustainable debts' and help reform the global financial system. 'My hope, which is the hope of the church, is that the leaders of the northern rich countries will assume their responsibility in this situation,' he said. 'They have a really clear opportunity here to have a change in mentality towards debt.' Direction of Leo papacy Barreto, a Jesuit like Pope Francis, says he, Leo and others in the Catholic Church hope to continue Francis's legacy of emphasizing care for the marginalized and environment. While he didn't vote in the conclave last month — Barreto is older than the 80-year-old cutoff — he said he participated in meetings with cardinals leading up to Leo's election, in which they 'insisted' that the new pope must continue the same path as Francis of looking after the Earth. Cardinal's plans in Calgary The cardinal will be a guest of honour at the G7 Jubilee People's Forum in Calgary from June 12 to 15 before the summit in Kananaskis. Activists and faith communities from across Canada and around the world will gather and participate in talks about ecological debt during the forum. Barreto, metropolitan archbishop emeritus of Huancayo, Peru, is known for his advocacy for the environment and poor in Peru and Latin America. Francis made Barreto a cardinal in 2018. According to The College of Cardinals Report, a website featuring profiles of cardinals compiled by independent Catholic journalists and researchers, Barreto is also known for his 'outspoken generally liberal views on national politics,' even facing death threats for speaking out against a smelter causing pollution that threatened the health of people in the Andes Mountains.
CTV News
a day ago
- Business
- CTV News
Cardinal who worked closely with Pope Leo XIV travels to Canada to support G7 demonstrators
A Peruvian cardinal who worked closely with Pope Leo XIV for years will be stopping in Calgary to support demonstrators as world leaders gather next week for the G7 summit in Alberta. Cardinal Pedro Ricardo Barreto Jimeno, 81, hopes to help draw attention to what he calls an 'ecological debt' crisis. According to Barreto and organizers from Development and Peace and Caritas Canada, the group that invited the cardinal to Canada, ecological debt refers to the debt owed to poorer nations and Indigenous communities resulting from damage caused by some companies from developed countries like Canada. This damage includes oil spills and pollution from mines. Development and Peace and Caritas Canada, the official humanitarian aid agency of the Canadian Catholic Church, invited the cardinal to support demonstrators in their campaign to call on G7 world leaders to prioritize the protection of the planet and poor communities. Ahead of a speech before dozens of people at Our Lady of Lourdes Parish in Toronto on Monday, Barreto spoke with through an interpreter about ecological debt. 'It's a very large injustice that the World Bank recognizes,' the Spanish-speaking cardinal said. He pointed to a World Bank 2023 debt report that found developing countries spent a record US$1.4 trillion servicing their foreign debt, as interest costs soared to a 20-year high of $406 billion. For many countries, this move would cut budgets in areas such as health and education. Barreto hopes developed countries like Canada will recognize their ecological debt to poorer countries. He and other environmental advocates are calling on Canada and other countries to cancel 'unjust and unsustainable debts' and help reform the global financial system. 'My hope, which is the hope of the church, is that the leaders of the northern rich countries will assume their responsibility in this situation,' he said. 'They have a really clear opportunity here to have a change in mentality towards debt.' Direction of Leo papacy Barreto, a Jesuit like Pope Francis, says he, Leo and others in the Catholic Church hope to continue Francis's legacy of emphasizing care for the marginalized and environment. While he didn't vote in the conclave last month — Barreto is older than the 80-year-old cutoff — he said he participated in meetings with cardinals leading up to Leo's election, in which they 'insisted' that the new pope must continue the same path as Francis of looking after the Earth. Cardinal's plans in Calgary The cardinal will be a guest of honour at the G7 Jubilee People's Forum in Calgary from June 12 to 15 before the summit in Kananaskis. Activists and faith communities from across Canada and around the world will gather and participate in talks about ecological debt during the forum. Barreto, metropolitan archbishop emeritus of Huancayo, Peru, is known for his advocacy for the environment and poor in Peru and Latin America. Francis made Barreto a cardinal in 2018. According to The College of Cardinals Report, a website featuring profiles of cardinals compiled by independent Catholic journalists and researchers, Barreto is also known for his 'outspoken generally liberal views on national politics,' even facing death threats for speaking out against a smelter causing pollution that threatened the health of people in the Andes Mountains.
The Guardian
20-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
A question for Lauren Sánchez: was this a hen do or a humanitarian mission to liberate Paris from good taste?
To Cannes, in the country of France, where last night Jeff Bezos's fiancee, Lauren Sánchez, got what she deserves: a philanthropy award. Lauren was honoured at something called the Global Gift Gala, where she received the women empowerment award for her commitment to climate justice, social justice and coming off at absolutely all times as a woman who refers to her breasts as 'my girls'. Regular readers will know I have a huge amount of time for her. She accepted her gong wearing a necklace with a diamond pendant slightly larger than an Amazon warehouse, once again redrawing the blueprint that other humanitarians will simply need to watch and learn from. Meanwhile, if there were awards for hen nights – or bachelorette parties, in the American style – then Lauren would surely have taken one for her full-scale invasion of Paris last weekend, after French forces withdrew and declared the city open. Hand on heart, I initially assumed Lauren was the new US ambassador to France, but then remembered that state department randos were probably seated in some windy overspill gazebo for Donald Trump's presidential inauguration, while Lauren had pride of place ahead of the actual cabinet as part of Oligarchs' Row. Plus, having just Googled, I discover the Senate yesterday confirmed Trump's pick for the ambassador to France – his own son-in-law's former jailbird dad. So this was very much a private visit to Paris for premarital pleasure on Lauren's behalf, a mood later reflected in her official Instagram communique to attendees and her 930,000 followers. 'To my girls … thank you for surprising me, lifting me up, and reminding me how much I needed this moment.' Remember, Lauren dresses everything in this same flattened palette of solipsism: a spa day, a space trip, a humanitarian award, new swimwear. Anyway, attendees for the hen weekend included fellow astronaut Katy Perry, the two most prestigious Kardashians – Kim and materfamilias Kris Jenner – as well as Eva Longoria, who travelled onward to Cannes to present Lauren with last night's humanitarian award. If you're wondering which of the party goes back furthest with Lauren, I wouldn't waste your time. Typically, celebrities do not have old friends. They regard it as a moral failing and a sign that you don't really want the big time enough. As for what was worn during the Paris festivities, the dress code wasn't specifically themed as Marie Antoinette – necklines did plunge deep, in the late 18th-century style, but hemlines had been guillotined somewhere near the Kármán line. One pharmaceutical billionaire's wife sported a vintage bronze-effect Issey Miyake breastplate recently purchased at auction for $54,000 (the girl brunch equivalent of that time Nicolas Cage outbid everyone for a stolen T-rex skull). Activities over the weekend included posting diligently to Instagram, the platform owned by fellow Oligarchs' Row occupant Mark Zuckerberg, all while making sure to tag in their travelling makeup artists, hairstylists and lesser support-retinue members. There was also an ostentatiously open-top boat ride down the Seine, where I think the ladies went to view the floating corpse of a trend once known as 'quiet luxury'. In truth, it must be said, those curated and filtered Insta photos of the attendees looked startlingly different to the candid ones snapped by Parisian street photographers as they left the various venues. Had you shown some of the faces in the latter snaps to the average person 40 years ago, they would have assumed something awful must have happened to the women. Luckily, our eyes have grown accustomed after decades of Botox, fillers and extreme 'work' going mainstream, so we don't notice the weirdness and read it instead as maximum hotness. Thank you, progress! All in all, the entire special Parisian operation has served to heighten interest in the forthcoming Bezos and Sánchez nuptials, which are due to take place in Venice at the end of next month, after extensive lobbying by local Italian politicians for it to be chosen as the host city/organism. Venice's mayor informed the Times that 'we were in competition with other places but we won out'. As one Venetian official put it: 'It's going to be on par with a G7.' Truly, the fairytale. And if you happen to be visiting Venice as a tourist over the same dates, you should probably know that Lauren and Jeff already 'booked every water taxi in the city'. In terms of securing other things, Lauren has become quite the expert in acquiring trophies – and I'm not talking about Jeff. This women empowerment award is far from Lauren's only humanitarian award in the past year or so. She and Jeff also picked up Conservation International's global visionary award, while madam alone somehow beat out the competition to win a humanity award from a charity called This Is About Humanity. Look, I don't pretend to understand the precise economics of throwing hugely glitzy charity galas to give climate awards to individuals who right at this moment are staying in Cannes aboard their megayacht, a vessel that emits more than 7,000 tonnes of CO2 a year and is so large it requires its own support yacht to trail around after it, carrying simple amenities such as the helicopter pad and some kind of personal submarine. I don't think normies CAN understand these things. Our role is to simply admire them. Even so, perhaps I'm not alone in feeling that it is becoming harder and harder work. In fact, the choice of Italy as host for the Bezos-Sánchez nuptials feels almost too on the nose. A few centuries ago, the super-rich of that country kicked off the Renaissance, commissioning a vast array of jewels of the visual arts. Our modern-day power players simply give us Instagram or red-carpet pictures. More of a dark ages dynamic, really, from which we might all fervently wish to be delivered. Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist
Al Jazeera
08-05-2025
- Politics
- Al Jazeera
As the conclave gathers, let debt justice be Pope Francis's legacy
Pope Francis was never drawn to pomp or grandeur. He asked to be buried in a simple casket, and his burial was held not in the ornate halls of the Vatican, but in a modest neighbourhood church, true to his lifelong humility. As a conclave gathers today to choose his successor, world leaders and faith communities are reflecting on how best to carry forward his legacy. Francis would not have wanted ornate tributes or empty gestures. He would have wanted action – especially in the form of debt cancellation for developing countries and a renewed commitment to climate justice. Francis envisioned 2025, a Jubilee year for the Catholic Church, as a time to restore justice – among people, between nations, and with the Earth itself. A time to wipe the slate clean and begin again, not in words but in deeds. That vision aligns closely with another urgent global imperative: 2025 is also the year by which scientists warn that global carbon emissions must peak and begin to decline if we are to avoid catastrophic climate breakdown. But instead of preparing for a just transition, many of the countries most affected by climate change are caught in a worsening 'climate-debt doom loop.' From cyclones in Mozambique to floods in Pakistan and prolonged droughts in Malawi, climate-related disasters – caused overwhelmingly by industrialised nations – are tearing apart the infrastructure and economies of developing countries and displacing millions of people. Yet rather than receiving long-overdue funding and support, climate-vulnerable nations are being drained by record levels of debt payments – many owed to the very countries and institutions most responsible for global warming. According to calculations by in 2023, developing nations spent roughly 40 times more on servicing foreign debt than they received in net climate assistance. This is not only unjust – it's self-defeating. Funds that should be invested in clean energy, sustainable agriculture, reforestation, flood defences and public health are instead diverted to repay wealthy creditors. Meanwhile, the escalating impacts of climate change are driving up borrowing costs, pushing vulnerable countries even deeper into debt. For every $10 spent on debt payments, an additional dollar is effectively added as a premium for climate risk. The consequences ripple far beyond environmental damage. Debt service now consumes more government spending in many countries than healthcare and education combined. Over three billion people live in countries where more is spent on interest payments than on meeting basic human needs. This is not only economically short-sighted – it is a moral scandal. Pope Francis named this reality with unflinching clarity. In his final New Year's message, he wrote: 'Foreign debt has become a means of control whereby governments and private financial institutions of the richer countries unscrupulously and indiscriminately exploit the human and natural resources of poorer countries, simply to satisfy the demands of their own markets.' He reminded us that the financial debt of the Global South is the mirror image of the massive ecological debt the Global North owes. Research by Oxfam and others estimates that wealthy nations – responsible for more than 75 percent of historic carbon emissions – owe developing countries around $5 trillion each year in climate-related reparations. That's a feasible figure, especially when you consider that these same wealthy governments currently spend about $7 trillion annually subsidizing fossil fuel industries. There is precedent for bold, transformative action. In the last Jubilee year – 2000 – a global movement led by civil society and faith groups secured the cancellation of over $100bn in debt for 35 heavily indebted nations. The results were remarkable: Tanzania and Uganda eliminated primary school fees, boosting enrolment. Mozambique and others expanded access to healthcare. Several countries saw improved credit ratings and increased foreign investment. That initiative was a recognition that economies must serve people, not the other way around. But it fell short of addressing the deeper structural flaws that enable recurring debt crises. In the years since, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, indebtedness has surged again. Now, the combined pressure of climate impacts, declining aid and economic instability – including trade disruptions triggered by protectionist policies – threatens to unleash a global debt tsunami. The poorest nations may be hit first and hardest, but this is not a crisis they face alone. A world shackled by unjust debt cannot act decisively to stop climate collapse. The debt crisis, if left unresolved, will sabotage efforts to protect people and the planet alike. Pope Francis reminded us that forgiveness, renewal and justice are not abstract ideals. They are moral and practical imperatives in an age of ecological breakdown. As the world prepares for the next chapter of papal leadership, we must act in his spirit: by resetting the rules of a broken financial system and building one rooted in equity, solidarity and care for our common home. The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial stance.
