Jubilee 2025: Become a Pilgrim of Hope during the Share Lent campaign!

As we enter the Lenten season, what do you think of the state of our world? Are you perhaps concerned about so much rising poverty, climate changes and violent conflict causing immense suffering?

More than ever, this Lent is a crucial time to reaffirm our faith by following Christ, who showed us the way through His teachings, His courage and love with which He endured the agony that led Him to the Cross.

While suffering may be inevitable in our lives, the resurrection teaches us that our faith, grounded in hope and love, can move mountains if we pray and act together.

This Lent is truly special because it coincides with the Jubilee year proclaimed by Pope Francis. The Holy Father invites us to be Pilgrims of Hope, bringing light into our families and communities, and helping the world's most disadvantaged peoples by advocating for the cancellation of their countries’ debts.

I invite you to be a Pilgrim of Hope and join our Share Lent Jubilee 2025 campaign, Turn Debt into Hope, by making a generous donation and signing the global petition for debt cancellation.

Like in the 2000 Jubilee campaign, you and I are called to advocate for the rights of our sisters and brothers around the world, to eliminate hunger, to restore human dignity and to create harmony with nature.

To prepare for the 2000 Jubilee, a Development and Peace ― Caritas Canada delegation had visited Peru in1998. Among the child labourers they met, Pedro was especially memorable.

Living in a straw hut with no running water or electricity in a Lima slum, 13-year-oldPedro was forced to leave school to help his parents meet the family’s basic food, water and hygiene needs.

Like many other boys, he worked 11 hours a day in dangerous conditions for less than $2.He burned tires to heat rocks to make them more brittle before breaking them by hand. With no protective equipment, he often cut his hands, legs and feet, and inhaled dust and toxic fumes. He also had to carry the rocks to load them onto a truck a kilometre away.

Pedro’s parents and their neighbours demanded infrastructure and services like garbage collection and electricity and water supply. Instead, the government asked them to tighten their belts to help repay loans the country had taken but the population had never benefited from.

Immoral debts keep people in poverty and oppression

Past loans had been used to bolster the army, which helped the Peruvian regime repress its opponents. They had also been corruptly misappropriated by a few wealthy individuals, widening the gap between the impoverished majority and a small minority unjustly enriched with the complicity of banks and wealthy nations.

This changed during the 2000 Jubilee, when the G7, led by Canada, responded positively to millions like you across Canada and the world, and cancelled the debts of 36 of the world’s poorest countries. This likely allowed many children like Pedro to return to school.

Today, 25 years later, the debt cycle is back. Too many children around the world are still forced to work because they lack food, water and security. Colluding with rich countries, large multinational corporations are forcing impoverished countries to grow monocultures for export, to the detriment of local crops, compromising local people’s food security.

In other words, many governments have lost control of their economies and their right to govern and protect their own people. And the results are obvious: as the prime victims of climate change, the populations of Global South countries, especially children and women, suffer the most.

All of this to again repay yet more immoral debt, which deprives this generation of gains made over the last 25 years.

Help us Turn Debt into Hope by giving generously to Development and Peace ― Caritas Canada and by signing our petition for debt cancellation so that children like Pedro can regain dignity and the joy of childhood.

May this Lent be a moment of grace in which we respond to the Jubilee call to do good in our world, as Jesus taught. May you find peace and become a Pilgrim of Hope.

Amen.

In solidarity,

Luke Stocking

Interim Executive Director