“A very large percentage” of Argentines are “having a hard time,” Archbishop Jorge García Cuerva said after Mass at the Metropolitan Cathedral on Friday 2 October. His warning about poverty has turned into a public dispute between Argentina’s government and the Catholic Church ahead of Pope Leo XIV’s planned visit. An adviser to the economy minister told the archbishop to do less politics and more preaching.
Who Gets to Speak About Poverty
García Cuerva, who leads the Archdiocese of Buenos Aires, described the country as “wounded” and “divided,” with “disqualification and intolerance” as “the order of the day.” He didn’t name President Milei, Infobae noted, and praised working families “who don’t give up,” El Día reported.
Felipe Núñez, an adviser to Economy Minister Luis Caputo and a director of BICE, a state-owned bank that finances investment and foreign trade, replied on X. “As a Catholic I am tired of this guy,” Núñez wrote. “Less politics and more preaching the word of God, Cuerva.” The post drew criticism beyond the Church. Ricardo Alfonsín, a former congressman and son of the late president Raúl Alfonsín, called it disrespectful, arguing that Christian faith requires attention to social suffering, El Destape reported.
Ministers stayed publicly silent, Infobae reported. El Día said senior ministers left the counterattack to figures such as Núñez while the government tried to distinguish García Cuerva from the rest of the Church hierarchy. Officials value ties with Marcelo Colombo, head of the Argentine Episcopal Conference, the national body of bishops. That careful separation reflects the government’s relationship-building with a powerful institution. “They are not the same political ties,” an official at the presidential palace told Infobae.
The Numbers Behind the Argument
INDEC, the national statistics institute, put poverty at 32.3 percent of the population in the first half of 2026—about 15.5 million people. The rate stood at 28.2 percent in the second half of 2025, leaving roughly 2 million more people poor. Indigence, or extreme poverty, rose from 6.3 percent to 7.5 percent over those same six months.
The government points to the 52.9 percent poverty rate in the first half of 2024, after Milei’s devaluation and spending cuts. Bishops counter that gains in the macroeconomy haven’t reached ordinary households. In August, Ángel Rossi, the archbishop of Córdoba, put the divide plainly: “the macroeconomy does not reach the plate.” The figures and the bishops’ words show what economic measures mean at household level. Officials’ public silence leaves others to fight over the poverty warning.
García Cuerva had warned against “division and polarisation” at the 25 May Tedeum, Argentina’s national-day thanksgiving service. On 7 August, the feast of San Cayetano, patron saint of work, he said absolute economic freedom cannot exist. Some officials privately link him to Kirchnerism, the left-wing Peronist movement of former president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner.
A Visit With Political Stakes
The government is also concerned about Leo XIV’s planned 9 November visit to Pequeño Cottolengo Don Orione, a home for disabled people in Claypole. The stop coincides with a congressional debate over a new disability law, where disputes over cost and wording remain unresolved. “The Cottolengo part is going to go badly,” one government source told Perfil. Another official said, “We do not think there will be problems.” Perfil reported that the government wanted the law settled before November; the article describes a legislative process, not a resolution of the dispute.
The weekend youth pilgrimage to Luján offers a different kind of public gathering: a 60-kilometre walk to Argentina’s main Marian shrine. The 52nd edition runs on 3 and 4 October and also serves as a logistics rehearsal for the pope’s mass there. The report describes the pilgrimage and its preparations, but no separate mutual-aid effort.
Leo XIV is due to land in Buenos Aires on Sunday 8 November and meet Milei at the Casa Rosada, the presidential palace. Monday 9 November is a national holiday. El Día reported that the dispute hasn’t changed the visit programme and that coordination between the government, Church and local authorities continues. The schedule is moving. The poverty figures remain on the table.