Amid the indignation, however, few were willing to ask what — or who — compelled Pope Francis to weigh in on the matter. If they had, they would have stumbled across the work of an influential figure who, it’s no exaggeration to say, is at the heart of the Vatican’s foreign policy.

Jeffrey Sachs, a world-renowned economist at Columbia University, has been an informal advisor to the Vatican for about a decade. Best known as the author of several books on poverty and climate change, his anti-American views, which entail blaming the US for Russia’s invasion, have seen him largely ostracised in academic and policy circles. Today, you’re more likely to catch him being interviewed by Tucker Carlson than a prestigious journal.

“The Pope is correct that negotiations require moral courage,” Sachs wrote to me in an email last April. “Zelensky showed that in March 2022, but was dissuaded by the US,” he added, reiterating the disputed account that the US and the UK forced Ukraine to turn down an almost done deal with Russia that would have ended the war. “Now, in my personal view, the US should show moral courage in recognising its mistake of pushing Nato enlargement.”

Although Francis has balanced his pacifist statements by occasionally praising “brave” Ukrainians, and has tactically backtracked following waves of criticism, the parallels between the Pope and Sachs on foreign policy are striking. Since the 2022 invasion, the Pontiff has said that “Nato barking at Russia’s gate” ended up “facilitating” Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine, has celebrated the legacy of the “great, enlightened Russian empire”, and has managed to alienate even Ukrainian Catholics. It is perhaps no surprise that, in Kyiv, the Vatican is largely considered pro-Russian.

On the war in the Middle East, meanwhile, Sachs has lamented that “the US is complicit in the genocide in Gaza”, while the Holy See described Israel’s response to October 7 as “inhuman” less than a week after Hamas carried out its attack. Sachs’s friendliness toward Xi Jinping’s China — he assured that, unlike in Gaza, no genocide is under way in Xinjiang — also dovetails with the current position of the Holy See, which signed (and then renewed) a much-discussed agreement with the regime.

And as Vatican officials and scholars advising the Holy See have told me, these converging views are no coincidence. They point out that Sachs was credited as one of the main authors of Francis’s 2015 encyclical Laudato si on the environment, and advised the Holy See on topics such as sustainable development, the climate crisis and economic inequality — striving to provide a scientific framework to the Pope’s moral authority. For years, he has been lecturing and consulting with top Vatican officials, reportedly visiting Rome as often as twice a month. The 2020 encyclical Fratelli Tutti on fraternity and social friendship took up the themes of solidarity and the multipolar world that Sachs has devoted himself to in recent years. In 2021, he was named a member of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, a prestigious academic body assisting the Church in developing its social doctrine. Pretty impressive for a non-Catholic raised in a Jewish family.

“The Pope relies on many advisers on political and economic issues, but certainly Sachs’s influence on the Pope’s inner circle has grown significantly during the last two years,” one Vatican aide told me. According to another official, Sachs’s ability to affect the debate also depends on his formidable fundraising power. Every year, he organises and chairs three major seminars in Rome on topics that Francis holds dear, and he works with donors and partners in order to cover the costs. In March, for instance, he set up a workshop named the Summit of the Future, aiming to link “fraternal economy” and “sustainable development” in a crossover that resembles a mixture of a Gospel and a UN brochure. The event was co-chaired with the Sustainable Development Solutions Network, a UN nonprofit created and still run by Sachs.

One of his long-term collaborators is Andrea Illy, CEO of illycaffè, the Italian coffee company known for championing social responsibility. Together they chair the Regenerative Society Foundation, an organisation comprising NGOs, academics, the private sector and “spiritual leaders”, which promotes a whole revolutionary socio-economic model. Illy has assisted Sachs in bringing questions of sustainable development to the forefront of papal matters, having been a speaker at one of Sachs’s workshops in the Vatican.

Among the main promoters of Sachs’s involvement in the Vatican is Stefano Zamagni, a professor of economics at the University of Bologna who led the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences from 2019 to 2023. “Sachs has no special access to the Pope,” Zamagni told me, “but his immense knowledge and authority is recognised by everyone. Because of that, the documents he prepares carry a lot of weight, and the Pope, whose background is not very solid, certainly reads them carefully.”

Zamagni concedes that Sachs is sometimes too extreme, but that’s just a “matter of style, not substance”. Yet Sachs is sure to convey his anti-US views on every available platform, including the TV show of Vladimir Solovyov, Putin’s chief propagandist. Elsewhere, the most aggressive tabloid of the Chinese Communist Party routinely interviews him on major geopolitical issues in order to “counter Western media’s malicious distortions”.

In his quest to become a Western spokesperson for the Global South, he blames the CIA for global turbulence and purports that Covid came out of a US lab. Sachs even floated the idea that the ISIS-K terrorists behind the Crocus City Hall attack in Moscow in March 2024 were acting on behalf of the US, as Washington routinely “engages in Jihadi-linked terror, and has done so for decades”.

Suggested reading

The scandals haunting Pope Francis

By Damian Thompson

“He used to be a mainstream economist and made many mistakes,” Zamagni said, referring to the early Nineties, when Sachs and others administered in Poland so-called “shock therapy” — dramatic economic policies employed to suddenly unleash market forces in state-controlled economies — and advised Russia to follow suit. “People don’t say that, but in Russia one million people died as a result of taking away health care coverage granted under the Soviet Union,” Zamagni said. In the end, the lost sheep rejoined the flock.

Sachs was named a professor at Harvard at the age of 28, received 42 honorary doctorates, filmed a documentary with Angelina Jolie, advocated for massive foreign aid to developing countries, applied scientific development principles to rural villages in Africa, fought to end poverty, partnered with George Soros, and worked with Bono in Africa at the height of the musician’s humanitarian career. Like many others before him, Sachs wanted to save the world. He also thought he knew how to do it. Soros believed Sachs had “a certain messianic quality about him”. He would eventually find in Pope Francis a leader who was the epitome of the principles he pursued all his life.

“My sense is that there was a turning point in his life,” Zamagni said. “I believe he went through a crisis and came out enlightened,” he added, praising the conversion-like journey that turned Sachs from torchbearer of neoliberal orthodoxy to leading advocate of the Global South. Others, though, see his apparent shifts as coherent elements of a technocratic framework.

“Sachs’s support for an unregulated free market in the early Nineties may seem to run counter to his current admiration for Xi’s China and other illiberal regimes, but it’s actually consistent with a mindset that puts efficiency before political debate,” says Nadia Urbinati, a professor of political theory at Columbia and colleague of Sachs. “Sachs and others want to reform democracy in order to make it more efficient. The idea, which is increasingly popular, is that democracy’s decision-making process is slow, troublesome and irrational, and therefore needs to be corrected with tools taken from autocracies and hybrid regimes,” Urbinati explained.

These days, Sachs seems desperate to be credited as a prophet of the Global South’s rise against the corrupt — and rapidly collapsing — world order shaped by the West. The very order Sachs worked so hard to build, before realising it was the work of the devil. Perhaps he has found in the Pope the moral inspiration required to re-launch himself into a new endeavour to fix the world’s shortcomings. In the end, the shock therapist, the humanitarian idealist, the conspiracy theorist, the renowned scholar, the messianic thinker and the enabler of autocrats are all facets of the man who thought he knew how to save the world.

His influence has been amazing. In 1985, just two years after taking tenure, he was advising a Bolivian government confronting hyper-inflation. Sachs devised a strong austerity package that hurt many citizens but reined in inflation. This ‘shock therapy’ became his trademark, exported first to Poland as it emerged from the Soviet communist straitjacket and then to Russia with dire consequences. The nation’s economy shrunk by half, state assets were pillaged and, ultimately, the ravaged nation turned to a nationalist strongman to restore stability. As we survey today’s turbulent world, it is arguable he bears some responsibility for Putin’s rise.

By time the impact of his ideas became apparent, Sachs had found a fresh cause after a trip to Zambia: the elimination of global poverty. This crusade might have seemed ambitious, but not for such a brilliant and self-confident fellow. He decided the problem was a poverty trap that left impoverished countries unable to tackle core problems – and the solution was giant dollops of foreign aid to solve issues such as disease, illiteracy, lack of jobs and antiquated agriculture that held back development. “We can banish extreme poverty in our generation”, he said in 2005.

Further reading

Western aid undermines African democracy

By Ian Birrell

His simple, uplifting gospel coincided with the rise of a new generation of Western political leaders, especially in Washington and Westminster. They were influenced by Live Aid, desperate to show they cared about the world and susceptible to such arguments. Among those who befriended him was George Osborne, then a young Tory shadow chancellor, who travelled with him to Uganda, penned joint articles on aid and pushed the idea of ring-fencing the discredited UN aid target in law. The New York Times called Sachs “the most important economist in the world”. Bono gushed that “his voice is louder than any electric guitar, heavier than heavy metal.”

For many years, those that dared question such tactics were dismissed as callous xenophobes. The political class largely closed ranks, demonstrating the worst kind of groupthink and ignoring evidence of consistent failure. The aid industry became bloated as budgets soared, especially in Britain where they surged even as public services were slashed by austerity. Now we see the consequences: a scandal-plagued charity sector focused on protecting lucrative brands, fat-cat private firms creaming off huge sums and vast flow of funds into pockets of repellent regimes. The estimated poverty trap is now half the size of annual development aid spend.

Some voices have emerged in recent years to question this ‘big bang’ approach promoted by Sachs. They range from African leaders and activists through to Western academics, including a Nobel-winning British economist lauded for his expertise on global poverty. Yet still few politicians question the frittering away of vast taxpayer sums on aid, let alone the dubious morality of donor-dictated policies being inflicted on poor nations. Besides, they are terrified of a backlash from self-serving charity chiefs accusing them of selfishness. And this is why a new report ordered by the department for international development (Dfid) is so significant.

For at the heart of the Sachs mission lies the Millennium Village Project (MVP), a giant experiment designed to prove that drenching places in cash can solve entrenched problems and lift people from extreme poverty. This is, of course, just one more example of how a sense of arrogant entitlement allows the aid industry, in tandem with Western donors, to use sub-Saharan Africa as a testbed for its theories. Yet this scheme was set up by the sector’s guru, pledged to prove huge cash injections can transform deprived rural communities, was endorsed by leading aid advocates and backed with £230 million in ten African nations.

Further reading

The charity sector must escape the echo chamber

By Andy Cook

This scheme encompasses half a million Africans. Yet far from proving aid works, it has done the precise opposite. And it has failed even on its own terms. Ever since it started in 2005 with villages in Kenya, there has been fierce debate over its bold claims, the inadequacy of comparison sites and independence of evaluations. One study published by Sachs and some colleagues in The Lancet was even found to be making misleading claims after other development experts highlighted a basic error in compiling child mortality comparisons.

So when Dfid decided to back the idea, they agreed in a phone call with Sachs to do so only on the basis that they would carry out a proper, independent evaluation of the project. Although they should not have spent £11 million in northern Ghana on an idea already taking severe flak, this demand for proper review – unlike other donors – was greatly to their credit. Now we have the results, which are scathing – and to my mind, largely demolish the case for development aid.

They concluded the scheme “did not achieve its stated goals of achieving the MDGs [Millennium Development Goals]” on time and “far from breaking the poverty trap, the project does not appear to have reduced poverty or hunger at all”, while it had “fallen short of producing a synergistic effect.” The authors admitted they were surprised “the project did not improve some of the outcomes explicitly targeted by the intervention such as child mortality, immunisation rates, antenatal care, access to drinking water and usage of mobile phones.”

Further reading

How long before the world's youngest continent revolts?

By Daniel Knowles

Their report found scarce difference on many indicators between the 35 villages soaked in British cash – to the tune of £2,906 per household – and others in a struggling savannah region where farmers say they earn £160 in a decent year. It found “a few attributable effects”, such as better attendance at new health clinics and schools, higher incomes (“probably temporarily” and strangely without rising consumption) and decline in child stunting – but even these were not cost effective since “what has been achieved could have been attained at substantially lower cost.” Meanwhile 31% of funds went on management and overhead costs.

The results have disturbed even aid supporters, alarmed by resources being diverted to such causes. One, for instance, questioned the ethics of spending so much public money on these kind of flashy, celebrity-endorsed projects when smaller sums going on simpler ideas such as insecticide-treated anti-malarial bed nets would be cheaper and more effective. These could also be run by local groups, rather than dictated by outsiders.

Sachs disputes some conclusions, telling me in emails that five years was “too short a time horizon” for achievement of all targets, dismissing concerns over cost effectiveness and clutching at straws offered in Dfid’s report. “It says that income went up and multidimensional poverty went down. It says that the income was saved, not consumed.” He pointed me to an “independent analysis” offering more favourable conclusions that he co-authored with his wife and others in The Lancet.

Yet the MVP was promoted to donors as “an integrated development initiative providing immediate evidence that, by empowering communities with basic necessities and adequate resources, people in the poorest regions of rural Africa can lift themselves out of extreme poverty in five year’s time.” And in response to a report I wrote from the region in 2012, Sachs responded on the MVP website that “the real test” would come by 2015 when it could be seen if this scheme achieved the Millennium Development Goals set by the UN. Yet this report found “statistically significant impact” on only seven of the 28 targets.

Further reading

Africa's entrepreneurial revolution

By Nigel Cameron

This project shows herd mentality can be a powerful force. It is not the first attempt to impose ‘big push’ aid ideas on small areas; there was even a series of ‘integrated rural development’ schemes tried four decades ago across Africa, including Ghana, with little lasting effect. But politicians love to look compassionate, and it is safer to follow the crowd even if heading in the wrong direction than challenge conventional wisdoms. So the political, charity, corporate and media elites readily closed ranks around flawed policies. And the result is further corrosion of faith in politics as huge sums are squandered on vanity projects abroad, especially when domestic public services are struggling or even being cut and the money achieves so little.

This is far from the first blow for Sachs, now based at Columbia University. The journalist Nina Munk wrote a devastating book called The Idealist after trailing him around and spending time in two Millennium Villages. As Bill Gates wrote, “It’s a valuable– and, at times, heartbreaking – cautionary tale.” The billionaire decided against investing in MVP after hearing the sales pitch, concluding there were valid questions over the speed of proposed gains, progress measurement and impact of funding withdrawal. Both Munk and Michael Clemens, senior fellow at the Center for Global Development, said last week they have been threatened with lawsuits by the project’s lawyers after voicing criticisms.

More from this author

When will politicians quit the war on drugs?

By Ian Birrell

The ego has crash landed, yet as Sachs offers his own nation a new foreign policy blueprint in his latest book, it is telling that until now there has been so little accountability for the vainglorious MVPs despite being lavished with public money.

Earlier in the month I revisited the Ghana villages and found people grateful for new clinics, schools and street lights. Yet far from seeing sustained development, already there were clear signs of declining services and decaying infrastructure now the cash taps have been turned off. And not one person with whom I spoke said there were was the slightest sign of rising prosperity.

Finally, after 13 years, we have an independent verdict on this landmark project – and it is a crushing indictment of failure. Sadly, I fear this report will be ignored as the sector simply switches to fresh experiments on poor people, dressed up in the usual talk of innovation. And when do you ever ever hear politicians admit they were wrong, especially when they are spectacularly wrong and billions have been blown? Yet these impoverished Ghana villages serve as a damning indictment of simplistic development ideas that swept the west, demonstrating the corrosive impact of groupthink and the insidious influence of an ambitious academic.