VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – Pope Francis has told world financial chiefs that poor countries hit by the economic impact of the coronavirus need to have their debt burden reduced and be given a greater say in global decision making.

In a letter to the participants of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank’s annual spring meeting, the pope said the pandemic had forced the world to come to terms with interrelated socio-economic, ecological, and political crises.

“The notion of recovery cannot be content to a return to an unequal and unsustainable model of economic and social life, where a tiny minority of the world’s population owns half of its wealth,” the pontiff said in the letter dated April 4.

He said a spirit of global solidarity “demands at the least a significant reduction in the debt burden of the poorest nations, which has been exacerbated by the pandemic”.

(Reporting by Gavin Jones; Edited by Crispian Balmer)