Austerity Starves Disability Care, Pope Says So Too

More than 400 people with disabilities live at the Pequeño Cottolengo Don Orione in Claypole, a care home that the base reporting says has been severely impacted by President Javier Milei's austerity measures. Combined with inflation, the center has reported extreme economic distress. On Monday, the Pope came to it.

Pope Leo XIV visited the home, about 25 to 30 kilometers from central Buenos Aires, on his first full day in Argentina. AP described the stop as a symbolically powerful rebuke of Milei's cuts. The institution, founded by an Italian priest in 1935, shelters people across 50 hectares. It's known as the "city of charity." Ninety-one years on, it's begging for the money that the state has stripped from it.

Who Gets Crushed

Cuts to government funding for care and services for people with disabilities have been one of the main sources of protest against Milei's austerity program since he took office in December 2023. That's the fourth year of the program, and the healthcare and social service sector has been hit hard. The government has portrayed the cuts as part of a reform process aimed at eliminating fraud and waste in the federal bureaucracy. Residents of a care home, meanwhile, are living the "reform."

Ana Trucco, a 22-year-old student, told AFP: "We must always be thinking about the most humble people in our country, who are being so abandoned today." She stood among a crowd. Organizers said about 100,000 people lined the route to Claypole and another 3,000 waited at the door.

The Reform Trap

The visit comes days before the Senate takes up a disability funding bill that Milei opposes. After negotiations involving the Catholic Church, the government and opposition agreed on a bill to guarantee funding for disability services. The lower house approved it in October. It still needs a Senate vote. So the care of 400 people at one home, and untold others across the country, now hangs on a legislative calendar, with the president who ordered the cuts opposing the fix.

What They're Calling "Order"

On Sunday, Milei received the Pope at the Casa Rosada for a private meeting of about 40 minutes. AP and the Buenos Aires Times report Milei had defended his program minutes earlier, invoking the School of Salamanca, the Ten Commandments and what he called "intertemporal general equilibrium." Residents of Claypole can't eat an equilibrium.

The Pope was blunt in his speech to the Cabinet and diplomats: "The economy must serve the person, not the person serve the economy." He named "families bearing the weight of uncertainty, those looking for work, and the elderly who have contributed to building society over many years. And those who, despite working, struggle to meet their household's needs." He also said authority "reaches its highest purpose when exercised as a service" and that those who govern "also have a duty to act prudently, recognise the limits of the power entrusted to them."

There's a limit to this rebuke. The same speech urged leaders to "stimulate private initiative," and it ran alongside a call for charity: "May Argentina be capable of doing great works of charity, as we see here." At the home, he imagined "thousands of young people joining as volunteers" and asked, "And why can't all of you be?" Volunteers filling a gap the state opened is one answer to defunding. Whether it's a good one is another question.

What the Residents Heard

"Your lives are not a burden on society. They are a blessing," Leo told them. "The progress of a nation is also measured by the welcome it is able to offer to all people with disabilities and special needs."

Security looked different. A total of 52,900 security personnel were deployed nationwide, and a 49-year-old man was arrested in Pilar after a threatening call against the Pope. Two million people, per the city government, attended his Mass in Palermo. A care home still waits on a Senate vote.