Pope Leo XIV: Argentina Visit Puts Disability Cuts in Focus
Pope Leo XIV is due to visit a Catholic home for people with disabilities on the first full day of his Argentina trip, as President Javier Milei’s government faces criticism over cuts to disability funding. The visit also brings their sharply different views on social policy and artificial intelligence into focus.
Pope Leo XIV is scheduled to visit a Catholic home for people with disabilities in Claypole, Argentina, on Monday, November 9, bringing the country’s disability-funding cuts into focus during his first trip there as pope. The pope’s visit to Argentina sets up a public contrast with President Javier Milei over the role of government and the value of social support.
The Cottolengo Don Orione, about 26 kilometers from Buenos Aires, will be the first stop on the pope’s first full day in Argentina. The home has about 400 residents with disabilities, and staff have been preparing its grounds and sanctuary for the visit.
Facility coordinator Fernando Montero said government deliveries of medications, special foods and diapers had stopped. “They haven’t delivered any since last November. The matter is in court,” he said.
Montero described the pope and Milei as having “completely opposing ideologies.” He said Leo teaches that a person’s worth is not measured by productivity, while he characterized Milei as a “hyper-capitalist.”
Milei’s government has made wide-ranging cuts to disability funding. The dispute has become a flashpoint between the church and the state, while a funding law remains in limbo amid a clash between the president and Congress.
The visit is part of a three-country South American trip. Leo began in Uruguay and is due to spend three days in Argentina before finishing with six days in Peru. It will be the first papal visit to Argentina since John Paul II visited in 1987; Pope Francis, an Argentine, did not return during his papacy.
Milei has defended public-spending cuts as necessary to curb inflation. Their cost has also drawn attention: the think tank Mate estimates that retirees receiving the minimum pension, 63% of the total, have lost about 30% of their purchasing power.
At a retirees’ march outside Congress last Wednesday, one protester held a sign reading, “Save us Pope Leo XIV – Milei is killing us.” Buenos Aires Archbishop Jorge García Cuerva said last month that Leo would find “a divided Argentina and a large number of very poor brothers and sisters.”
The two leaders also differ over artificial intelligence. Leo called for “disarming” AI in May, while Milei has said he would not regulate the technology. His government has presented bills to build data centers across the country and grant legal status to “no-human corporations.”
Sociologist and computer scientist Milagros Miceli, who leads the Critical AI Lab in Berlin, called the contradiction between them “pretty evident.” She said Leo’s visit could put “human beings at the centre” of discussions about technology and its priorities.
Juan Grabois, a left-wing Peronist deputy and social leader who served in the Vatican’s Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, said deregulation and replacing human roles with algorithmic systems had become government priorities.
