The Detroit Catholic quotes Eric LeCompte on the concept of "jubilee", the progress made as a result of the last Jubilee year, 2000 and the issues facing developing countries as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Read an excerpt below, or the full article here.
Debt relief: Biblical jubilee concern is focus of Holy Year 2025, too
By Cindy Wooden
Eric LeCompte, executive director of Jubilee USA Network, an alliance of faith-based development and debt-relief advocacy organizations, was one of the speakers at the Vatican meeting.
Speaking to Catholic News Service ahead of the gathering, he said that in the Scriptures a jubilee "is about a continuing process to address inequities, a continuing process that protects all of us from having too much or too little."
Thanks to St. John Paul II, Pope Benedict XVI and all the religious and civic partners who came together to push for debt relief in the early 2000s, he said, the foundation was laid "for $130 billion in debt relief for developing countries; 55 million kids in Africa, who never would have seen the inside of a classroom, are going to school. We also changed how aid works, how accountability works. And we moved forward some very significant anti-corruption policies."
But then the pandemic struck.
As governments struggle to pay their debts, decades of progress in development have stalled or even been rolled back, poverty rates among women and children around the world are soaring, unemployment is high in the developing world and price increases -- especially for food and fuel -- are creating hardships even in the wealthiest countries. And all of that pushes migration.
Read more here.
