Though Pope Francis passed away a little more than a year ago, he remains present in his native Argentina in the fight to make the demands of social justice central to church and civic life.

On a recent cold, drizzly morning in the capital, Buenos Aires, an image of Francis with his rallying cry for a church willing to “make noise” watched over a hunger strike by Catholic priests in the iconic Plaza de Mayo square in front of the Casa Rosada presidential palace.

The week-long ecumenical hunger strike in June was called to draw attention to what participants say is growing political polarization and an increasing economic gap between rich and poor in this South American country of 46 million people.

The Rev. Rodolfo Viano, a Franciscan pastor of a parish on the city’s outskirts, said the church cannot resign itself to policies that hurt the majority of Argentines.

“This is a call to examine our national conscience to stop cruelty and policies that harm our people,” Father Viano said. “Past governments have implemented unfair policies, but what is happening today does not compare to anything we have seen before.”

“We need to be faithful to what Pope Francis preached,” he said, “which has continued with Pope Leo—that the poor must be at the center of the church.”

Father Viano is not confident in the accuracy of the government’s frequent claims that poverty has receded under libertarian President Javier Milei, who was elected in 2023 and is now at the halfway point of his four-year term. According to Father Viano, if conditions were improving for the majority of Argentines, Mr. Milei’s public support would not be underwater.

According to a June poll by the Universidad de San Andrés, only 30 percent of Argentines surveyed were happy with the state of the country, with 61 percent unhappy and the rest undecided.

Argentina’s National Institute of Statistics and Census, Indec, reported that the percentage of Argentines living in poverty fell to 28.2 at the end of 2025. Poverty had spiked to just below 53 percent in early 2024, shortly after Mr. Milei took office and began an economic adjustment program that included a dramatic reduction in state social spending and economic interventions.

The Rev. Francisco “Paco” Olveira said Indec’s numbers and the government’s crowing about its economic progress make no sense. He said poverty cannot be declining as much as the government claims, especially in light of numbers published each week about businesses closing and increasing numbers of Argentines saying they cannot make it to the end of the week with what they earn.

Indec reports that unemployment increased to 7.8 percent in the first quarter, up three points from the end of 2025, while inflation was running at 33.2 percent for the 12 months through May. The economy is not expanding as Mr. Milei promised, growing at only 1.7 percent in the first quarter of the year.

The state’s labor safety agency reported in June that 26,448 businesses have closed their doors since Mr. Milei took office. Investment was down by 1.7 percent in the first quarter of this year, the fourth consecutive quarter it has contracted.

The Milei government routinely dismisses criticism or doubts of its progress, arguing that it is transforming Argentina after decades of economic disaster. It notes a fiscal surplus and increasing export revenue as important successes. While he acknowledges that inflation has not come down as quickly as planned, the president is quick to point out that the current annualized inflation rate of 33 percent is far better than the nearly 300 percent recorded in early 2024.

Sergio Woyecheszen, an economist and former deputy governor of the nation’s central bank, said the government’s dramatic reform interventions had scored some successes but have also so far resulted in a kind of dual economy.

The Milei government, he said, has managed to establish a degree of calm “on both the fiscal and trade fronts.” At the same time, data on employment and income “reflect a different reality.”

“We have an economy operating at very different speeds,” Mr. Woyecheszen told America, some sectors appear “like a locomotive without cars” and others “cars without a locomotive.” He explained that certain sectors of Argentina’s economy—agriculture, mining and oil and natural gas extraction—are performing well but not pulling anything behind them in terms of job creation, while the rest of the economy is basically stalled.

Father Olveira said conditions for everyday Argentines are only going to worsen as the government doubles down on reforms, including new education and labor laws that he said are eliminating the few social benefits left in the country.

“There is no interest in the person, in the average Argentine, only with the model and meeting targets to eliminate the state,” Father Olveira said. He added that he and the other priests who joined the hunger strike “are here to add our grain of sand on behalf of poor and say, ‘Enough.’”

He said that instead of reducing the social safety network further, the government should focus on changes that create employment and provide essential services, starting with education, health and housing.

Like Father Viano, Father Olveira is part of a group known as “priests in action for the poor,” who live and minister in poor barrios on the outskirts of Buenos Aires. Originally from Spain, he has lived in Argentina for more than 40 years.

While top Argentine clergy did not participate in the hunger strike, Father Viano said the church hierarchy is supportive of the efforts of the hunger-striking priests. He said that many religious congregations are also taking a much more active role in sponsoring programs for the poor in Argentina.

“The hierarchy is on the side of the poor,” Father Viano said. “The bishops have questioned many of the measures adopted by this government.”

The Argentine Episcopal Conference has taken a strong stand against a bill proposed in late March by the government to change the existing law regulating private property. The proposal would eliminate most regulations on foreigners owning property and would make it easier for companies to acquire publicly held lands.

“We want to express our deep concern for the bill proposed by the executive. We believe that it will affect sovereignty over our land, our food, our common goods and the right of peoples to self-determination,” the bishops said in a statement released in June.

They added that land should not be seen as a simple economic resource, but “a source of food, water, seeds, landscapes and the multiple forms of life that make our existence possible.” Different statements from the conference also call into question the government’s claims of economic success.

Individually and collectively, the bishops have also criticized the Milei administration and Argentina’s congress for a new labor law, which they said does not guarantee “defense of fundamental rights, including work,” and a new law governing management of glaciers, which they argue threatens rural communities by potentially restricting access to water.

Father Olveira said that Mr. Milei’s end goal appears to be the dismantling of state institutions. The president plans the merger of the education and labor ministries into a new Human Capital Ministry and the elimination of social assistance programs and other reform measures the general public does not support.

According to Father Olveira, Argentines are waking up to the dangers of Mr. Milei’s agenda, but he fears it will not matter. It is not really Mr. Milei, but the political and economic model that he is establishing in Argentina that needs to be challenged.

He explained: “Milei might not get re-elected, but the other [presidential] options right now are not any better and some would be even worse.”

Pope Francis never visited his home country during his papacy, but Father Olveira said if Pope Leo XIV travels to Argentina, he will find a unified church, but a country where economic and social gaps are widening.

“Trying to get this government to understand the suffering gets you nowhere,” he said. “It is like talking to a wall. The only difference is that a wall does not turn around and hurt you more.”

He said Mr. Milei has not attacked Leo the way he went after Francis—he famously called Francis “an imbecile who defends social justice”—but his true attitude toward Rome has not changed.

“They will welcome the pope if he comes,” Father Olveira said, “but it will be all show.”

Lucien Chauvin contributes from Lima, Peru.