IDB chief pitches rare earth mining benefits to Pope Leo XIV

A top development banker took the case for rare earth mining straight to Pope Leo XIV, arguing that Latin America should not be left on the sidelines of the minerals rush. Ilan Goldfajn, president of the Inter-American Development Bank, met privately with the pope on Friday in Vatican City and said the region could benefit if mining projects are paired with safeguards and local value-added processing.

The conversation put two competing visions of development in the same room. On one side was Goldfajn, whose bank describes itself as the leading source of financing and knowledge for improving lives in Latin America and the Caribbean. On the other was a Vatican that has been pushing Catholic organizations to pull money out of mining industries, warning that church investments should align with ecological teaching and not reinforce harm to people or land.

That divestment campaign was launched in March 2026 and is tied to an ecumenical network of church groups and Indigenous-rights activists working across 12 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean. The network, known as Iglesias y Minería and the Church and Mining Network, has focused on communities affected by mining and on the damage that often lands first on Indigenous peoples, poor neighborhoods and local water sources.

Goldfajn’s pitch was aimed at a pope with unusually direct experience of those tensions. Leo, born Robert Prevost, has personal and pastoral ties to Peru and to mining regions across Latin America, making the issue more than an abstract policy debate inside the Vatican. For a church already under pressure from communities that have lived through contamination, displacement and uneven labor gains, the question is whether cleaner language around critical minerals can really change the realities on the ground.

The timing also matters. Rare earths sit at the center of the global tech boom and the supply chains that power it, which has intensified the scramble among governments, companies and lenders to secure access. The IDB meeting followed a January 24 Vatican encounter with senior business leaders from the energy and critical-minerals sectors, including executives from BHP and Vale, as part of the Building Bridges Initiative begun in 2022 by the Pontifical Commission for Latin America.

Taken together, the two Vatican meetings show how hard institutions are trying to shape the moral story around extractive projects. Goldfajn’s intervention suggested the IDB wants to persuade Leo XIV that Latin America can capture more value from strategic minerals than it did from older booms, while the Vatican is being asked to decide whether that promise is development or simply a new ethical cover for the same old pressures.