Eric LeCompte

Pope Francis helped facilitate efforts to restructure the crippling debt load in his native Argentina Feb. 5, taking part in a Vatican conference that was the setting for discussions between the country's finance minister and the head of the International Monetary Fund.

Michael Sean Winters rounds up political news and commentary: Why polarization is a bigger problems for Dems than Republicans; Salon looks at convergence of climate change and third world debt

Seventy-five years ago, 44 nations sent delegates to the Bretton Woods resort where they negotiated the architecture of the postwar economy. They understood the need for multilateral solutions. They didn't know it then, but their work set the terms of the 2020 election. 

Distinctly Catholic: The social and ecological and ecclesial and political are all interrelated, not only in the Amazon to be sure, but interrelated there in such a way that if we do not root out the sin that has permeated these various realities, the region, and with it the whole planet, are endangered.

In an eight-hour visit, Pope Francis pointed to economic growth that he said "does not always profit everyone" and "feels the need to sacrifice human lives on the altar of speculation and profit alone."

Pope Francis lamented the high rate of poverty in Mozambique Sept. 6, suggesting that government officials here had become corrupted in the process of securing needed foreign assistance.

Distinctly Catholic: I am firmly convinced that everything that is wrong with capitalism was on full display in creating the Puerto Rican debt crisis.