Pope Francis' Argentina: Lessons for the global church from the pope's homeland

According to 2021 statistics, the bottom 50 percent of Argentina's population holds less than 6 percent of the nation's wealth, while the top 10 percent holds 58 percent, and the top 1 percent holds more than 25 percent. The school hosts activities from before dawn until late at night in hopes of keeping children off the streets-a generous term for the sidewalk-width dirt paths between buildings in the shantytowns, unnavigable by police or emergency vehicles. Meeting the communities' pastoral needs, however, has largely fallen on the shoulders of the shantytown priests, a group of Catholic clergy who, rather than driving into the slums to celebrate the sacraments, live there among the people-an exercise in solidarity that has, in the past, proven deadly. All of us priests who do this ministry of working and living in the slums would love to host him, but I think we have better chances, because here he could say Mass in the San Lorenzo stadium!" Nipo Chan, a first-generation Argentine whose parents left Japan before World War II, hosts a salsa music program on the parish's radio station and remembers when the pope would visit this slum.