Despite Pope Francis’s wishes, there’s little appetite for richer nations to help the poorest

Pope Francis wants to make 2025 a Jubilee year of debt forgiveness for the world’s poorest countries.

But campaigners struggled to find much backing among the powerful at the IMF and World Bank .

Debt relief is also likely to be discussed at the UN Financing for Development conference in Seville in late June .

Some development campaigners seized on his comments as a positive sign that the US would not stand in the way of multilateral efforts to ease the burden for the world’s poor.

Others warned that in saying that he wanted to make the IMF again’, Bessent appeared to be yearning for a return to the bad old days of economic shock theory.