INDEC reported poverty at 32.3 percent of Argentina’s population in the first half of 2026, about 15.5 million people. The figure came as an adviser to the economy minister attacked the archbishop of Buenos Aires for speaking about social suffering. Poverty rose from 28.2 percent in the second half of 2025, leaving roughly 2 million more people poor. The dispute has intensified five weeks before the planned papal visit of Leo XIV.
Who Pays
Archbishop Jorge García Cuerva described Argentina as “wounded” and “divided” after Mass at the Metropolitan Cathedral on Friday 2 October. He said a “very large percentage” of Argentines were “having a hard time.” He didn’t name President Milei, and praised working families “who don’t give up,” El Día reported.
Poverty had stood at 52.9 percent in the first half of 2024, after Milei’s devaluation and spending cuts. The government points to the decline from that earlier figure. Bishops say the improvement hasn’t reached ordinary households. In August, Ángel Rossi, the archbishop of Córdoba, said “the macroeconomy does not reach the plate.”
Indigence, or extreme poverty, rose to 7.5 percent in the first half of 2026 from 6.3 percent in the second half of 2025. The reported figures put public language alongside widespread household deprivation, which has increased in the latest comparison.
The Government’s Response
Felipe Núñez, an adviser to Economy Minister Luis Caputo and a director of BICE, a state-owned bank that finances investment and foreign trade, publicly rebuked García Cuerva. “As a Catholic I am tired of this guy,” Núñez wrote on X on Friday. “Less politics and more preaching the word of God, Cuerva.”
Ricardo Alfonsín, a former congressman and son of the late president Raúl Alfonsín, called Núñez’s post disrespectful, El Destape reported. He argued that Christian faith requires attention to social suffering. Ministers remained publicly silent, Infobae reported.
El Día reported that senior ministers left the counterattack to second-tier figures such as Núñez while the government sought to distinguish García Cuerva from the rest of the Church hierarchy. Officials value their ties with Marcelo Colombo, head of the Argentine Episcopal Conference, the national body of bishops. “They are not the same political ties,” an official at the presidential palace told Infobae.
Milei and his sister Karina, the presidency’s secretary-general, ordered officials to keep relations with the Church free of politics, Infobae reported. Some officials privately link García Cuerva to Kirchnerism, the left-wing Peronist movement of former president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner.
A Visit and an Unsettled Law
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, Perfil reported. The stop coincides with a congressional debate over a new disability law. Disputes over its cost and wording remain unresolved, and the government wants the law settled before November.
“The Cottolengo part is going to go badly,” one government source told Perfil. Another official said, “We do not think there will be problems.” The debate continues alongside the planned visit. Its cost and wording remain contested.
García Cuerva had warned against “division and polarisation” at the 25 May Tedeum, the thanksgiving service for Argentina’s national day. On 7 August, the feast of San Cayetano, patron saint of work, he said absolute economic freedom cannot exist. Milei had insulted Pope Francis while a television pundit and candidate, then embraced him at the Vatican in February 2024.
García Cuerva was expected to speak again at the weekend youth pilgrimage to Luján, a 60-kilometre walk to Argentina’s main Marian shrine. The 52nd edition runs on 3 and 4 October and serves as a logistics rehearsal for the pope’s mass there. Leo XIV is due to land in Buenos Aires on Sunday 8 November and meet Milei at the Casa Rosada. El Día reported that the dispute hadn’t changed the visit programme and that government, Church and local authorities continued to coordinate.