The world’s highest Catholic authority, the successor to Saint Peter himself, has thoughts on how much Tesla CEO Elon Musk should make.
In his first media interview since assuming the papacy, published Sunday by Crux, a news site reporting on the Vatican and the Catholic Church, Pope Leo criticized the growing wealth inequality that he says is fueled in part by massive corporate compensation deals.
The Pope said that 60 years ago, CEOs made maybe four to six times more than their workers, but that now, according to the last figures he saw, it is 600 times more.
“Yesterday, the news broke that Elon Musk is going to be the first trillionaire in the world. What does that mean, and what’s that about? If that is the only thing that has value anymore, then we’re in big trouble,” the Pope said.
Tesla’s board proposed a $1 trillion compensation package for Musk earlier this month. The massive payday is tied to Musk meeting ambitious “operational milestones,” including boosting Tesla’s valuation to $8.5 trillion, selling about 12 million cars over the next decade, and deploying one million robotaxis.
Tesla Chair Robyn Denholm said in a recent interview that the eye-popping package and the bold benchmarks were designed to keep Musk’s attention on Tesla’s future. Musk is also the CEO of SpaceX, Neuralink, and xAI. He has other projects, too, and has famously and repeatedly dipped into politics.
“To me, the plan is super ambitious, and that is what motivates Elon,” she said during an interview with CNBC. On Friday, Denholm noted in an interview with Bloomberg that Musk gets nothing “if he doesn’t achieve the goals.”
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Shareholders will vote on the package at the company’s annual meeting in November.
Pope Leo made the comments about Musk’s pay package in response to a question about growing polarization, both in the Catholic Church and in society at large. He called wealth disparity a driving force of that polarization.
“Add on top of that a couple of other factors, one which I think is very significant, is the continuously wider gap between the income levels of the working class and the money that the wealthiest receive,” he said.
In June, during a summit with world leaders and policymakers organized by the Catholic Church, Pope Leo called for a more equitable distribution of resources.
“This would mean, for example, working to overcome the unacceptable disproportion between the immense wealth concentrated in the hands of a few and the world’s poor,” he said, according to Arlington Catholic Herald. “This imbalance generates situations of persistent injustice, which readily lead to violence and, sooner or later, to the tragedy of war.”
Cardinal Robert Prevost, originally from Chicago, became Pope Leo XIV in May. The 69-year-old is the first US-born pope. He also holds Peruvian citizenship.
