Two Million Kneel in Buenos Aires as Austerity Bites Deep

Thousands of people slept on Buenos Aires pavement Sunday night, wrapped in sleeping bags and blankets, guitars in hand, to secure a spot for a Mass. By Monday morning, the city government counted two million of them along Avenida Libertador. It was the biggest ceremony of Pope Leo XIV's pontificate, bigger than Madrid, bigger than the Jubilee youth gathering at Tor Vergata in Rome. And in a reserved section close to the altar sat President Javier Milei and his Cabinet, along with roughly 250 national and 250 City officials on the invite list.

Who Has the Power

The security apparatus behind the spectacle was enormous: 52,900 officers deployed nationwide. A 49-year-old man was detained in Pilar over a death threat against the Pope. Mayor Jorge Macri handed Leo the keys to the city. Milei and his sister Karina Milei, secretary general of the Presidency, met the pontiff at the airport Sunday and then sat with him privately for about 40 minutes at the Casa Rosada. The people who slept outside got screens: 33 of them, so they could follow the Popemobile's 2.3-kilometer crawl toward the altar at the Monumento de los Españoles in Palermo. The officials got a designated area.

Who Gets Crushed

Earlier Monday, Leo visited the Pequeño Cottolengo Don Orione in Claypole, Almirante Brown, a home founded by an Italian priest in 1935 that shelters over 400 vulnerable people with disabilities across 50 hectares. They call it the "city of charity." The Associated Press reports that Milei's austerity measures have hit the healthcare and social service sector hard, and the center has reported extreme economic distress. Milei took office about two years and eleven months ago. The people in that home didn't vote on the budget lines that squeezed them.

Leo's visit came days before the Senate takes up a disability funding bill that Milei opposes. The lower house approved it in October, after negotiations involving the Catholic Church. So the fate of people with disabilities now sits with a legislature, a president who opposes the bill, and a church that brokered the talks. The residents themselves hold no seat at that table.

"Quisiera hoy afirmar que sus vidas no son un peso para la sociedad; son una bendición," the Pope told them. "I would like to affirm today that your lives are not a burden on society; they are a blessing." He added: "El progreso de una nación también se mide por la acogida que sabe dispensar a todas las personas con discapacidad y necesidades especiales." And: "Que Argentina sea capaz de hacer grandes obras de caridad, como vemos aquí, donde el amor de Cristo triunfe sobre el individualismo y la exclusión."

Charity, in other words, was the prescription. A blessing instead of a budget line.

What People Actually Did

The crowds did the organizing themselves. Families came from La Plata. Worshippers arrived at midnight and camped in the open. Lay volunteers staffed mobile communion stations, handing out tens of thousands of hosts from a stock of more than 2,000 chalices and over 500,000 consecrated wafers. "We've come from La Plata with the whole family. It's deeply moving and historic," one man waiting told reporters. Teresa Videla, 63, said: "We were dating when John Paul II visited 40 years ago. And now it's very special for us to come back and see the visiting pope." The last papal visit to Argentina was John Paul II in 1987, 39 years ago.

What They're Calling "Order"

In his Sunday speech, Leo said: "The economy must serve the person, not the person the economy," and urged that growth reach those with the greatest difficulties. His Monday agenda includes a 4:10 p.m. meeting at the Catholic University of Argentina in Puerto Madero with union leaders, business people, workers and social movement representatives, all in one room, under one institution's roof. In his homily, the 71-year-old Pope, who underwent lung cancer surgery three weeks ago, called the Christian family "today more than ever" a "pillar among the many precarious aspects of our time."

Precarious is the word. Two million people showed up for comfort. The government that hosted the Pope is the same one whose cuts pushed a home for hundreds of disabled people into extreme distress.