Archbishop's web site Denver Catholic Register Parishes Catholic Pastoral Center
February 28, 2001
Grassroots effort seeks to cancel Third World debt
Ecumenical JubileeUSA gathering attracts 70 international participants
By Amy C. Sheber Howard
Seventy representatives of various denominations and religious organizations from around the country and beyond the United States met in Denver Feb. 16-18 as part of the JubileeUSA Network, a grassroots organization seeking support for cancellation of the debt of impoverished countries, organizers said.
Debt owed by third world nations to the United States and other affluent countries keeps thousands of people in Africa, Asia and Latin America from access to food, education and health care, organizers said. According to United Nations statistics, 19,000 children die each day as a result of payments going to rich countries to service international debt, instead of to health care and food for the poor.
Participants attended the event held at the First Unitarian Church to strategize how to move the work of Jubilee 2000 into the new millennium. Originally a campaign limited to the year 2000, the issue has now grown into a movement, organizers said.
As a result of the conference, participants developed several key areas to focus on to mobilize community support to cancel third world debt, including building awareness of the links between debt and AIDS, and to advocate for legislation which authorizes cancellation of debt, organizers said.
The weekend gathering included a large number of Catholic representatives including religious sisters and Catholic lay people, as well as leaders of several Catholic organizations such as the Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns, and the Colombian Justice and Peace Office.
Sponsored by the Colorado Jubilee Campaign and the American Friends Service Committee in Denver, the gathering drew representatives of the Lutheran, Presbyterian, Methodist, and Mennonite churches, as well as religious, economic, and hunger organizations such as the Inter-Religious Task Force on the World Bank.
Organizers noted that U.S. bishops and Pope John Paul II have spoken on behalf of debt cancellation in the spirit of Jubilee.
"Debt relief offers needy countries a future of hope" Archbishop Charles Chaput wrote in the Denver Catholic Register June 23, 1999."The Catholic understanding of Jubilee debt forgiveness implies much more than mercy — it's also about justice."
Archbishop Chaput also reflected: "The Catholic principle of solidarity reminds us that we are each other's keepers, and we should work for policies that promote justice worldwide."
On the World Day of Peace in 1999, Pope John Paul II urged, "I make a pressing appeal to all those with responsibility for financial relations on the worldwide level. I ask them to make a sincere effort to find a solution to the frightening problem of the international debt of the poorest nations ... An immediate and vigorous effort is needed ... to ensure that the greatest possible number of nations will be able to extricate themselves from a now intolerable situation."
The JublieeUSA Network is based on the Biblical tradition of Jubilee which, in Leviticus 25, exhorts freeing those enslaved because of debts, returning lands lost because of debt, and restoring community torn by inequality. The organization works with a sister group, Jubilee South, which represents countries in the southern hemisphere impoverished as a result of international debt.
