• Pope Leo XIV criticizes Elon Musk's proposed $1 trillion pay package.
• He highlights growing wealth inequality and corporate compensation disparities.
• The Pope warns that excessive focus on wealth indicates troubling societal values.

Pope Leo XIV has publicly criticized the proposed $1 trillion compensation plan for Tesla CEO Elon Musk, emphasizing the widening income gap between corporate executives and the working class. "Yesterday the news that Elon Musk is going to be the first trillionaire in the world. What does that mean, and what's that about?" the Pope remarked in his first media interview, stressing the ethical implications of such vast wealth accumulation, which he connects to societal polarization. He pointed out that while CEOs traditionally earned four to six times more than their workers, the current gap has escalated to about 600 times. "If that is the only thing that has value anymore, then we're in big trouble," he warned, as highlighted in reports by Newsweek, Business Insider, India Times, and India Times.

The proposed compensation plan for Musk is tied to ambitious performance targets, including boosting Tesla's valuation to $8.5 trillion and selling 12 million vehicles over the next decade. Tesla board chair Robyn Denholm has defended the plan as a necessary incentive to retain Musk's leadership and drive innovation. "Putting together any compensation plan, you need to look at what motivates the individual... for Elon, it’s doing things that no one else has done before," Denholm stated, as noted in multiple reports including Business Insider and India Times.

Pope Leo's comments come amidst a broader discourse on wealth distribution, as he layers his critiques not only onto Musk's financial ambitions but also onto the societal ramifications of such disparities. The Pope's words reflect enduring concerns about the "unacceptable disproportion between the immense wealth concentrated in the hands of a few and the world's poor," a sentiment he reiterated in previous global discussions, aligning his views with those of critics who deem the proposed package "grossly immoral," such as U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders, as reported by Newsweek and India Times.