Pope Leo XIV: Dignity Must Prevail Over Profit
Speaking in Buenos Aires, he urged workers and business leaders to put people before profit and warned that profit-only logic makes firms “structures of sin.”
On Monday, November 9, 2026, the second day of his apostolic journey to Argentina, Pope Leo XIV addressed workers, business leaders, union delegates, informal laborers, and academics at the Catholic University of Argentina (UCA) in Buenos Aires.
He spoke after hearing testimonies from waste picker Verónica San Martín, businessman Juan Martín Allende, union delegate Sabrina Soledad Sapone, and Soledad Cuellar of the Ava Guaraní community in Salta. The Holy Father insisted that “the economy must be at the service of the person, and not the person at the service of the economy,” and that the human person is “the author, the center and the goal of all economic and social life.”
Work, Property, and the Common Good
Quoting the “three Ts” associated with Pope Francis, he declared: “To deprive a person of work is not simply to deny that person an income. It severely wounds their dignity, deprives them of the ability to contribute to society and plunges them into social exclusion.”
Private property, he recalled, is defended by the Church yet “is always subject to a social obligation,” because “the earth and its fruits have been given by God for the sustenance of all humanity.” To entrepreneurs he said: “When economic profit is established as the sole criterion of success, a business becomes dehumanized and turns into a structure of sin that generates exclusion.” He cited the Venerable Enrique Shaw, linked to the founding of the UCA.
Unions, he added, are “indispensable institutions when they defend those who have no voice.” Waste pickers, farmers, and artisans “do not passively wait for state assistance” but “organize themselves from the grassroots to build community-based solutions.” On technology he warned that “artificial intelligence and unregulated automation can put countless jobs at risk” and that technology “must always be subject to ethics.”
A Call Heard Amid National Debate
Informal workers now account for about 45 percent of Argentina’s labor force, up from 41 percent when President Javier Milei took office. After the previous day’s address to officials, Milei called the pope’s words “outstanding” but declined to discuss their substance. Buenos Aires Province Governor Axel Kicillof responded: “Let them listen to him, those who have closed their ears.”
The teaching reaffirmed the Church’s social doctrine: economic life finds its measure in the dignity of every person created in the image of God, never in profit detached from the common good.