Catholic church calls on president of El Salvador not to lift ban on gold mining

SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador (AP) — The Roman Catholic Church has called on the president of El Salvador not to lift the country’s ban on gold mining. Archbishop José Luis Escobar Alas asked President Nayib Bukele not to reverse the ban, which has been in place since 2017. Escobar Alas said “it will damage this country forever.” On Wednesday, Bukele called the 7-year-old ban on metals mining “absurd,” and claimed unmined gold would be “wealth that could transform El Salvador,” in comments on the social platform X. Bukele’s party controls El Salvador’s Congress by a wide margin, so a formal proposal to end the ban is unlikely to meet much resistance.