Pope Leo: Faith cannot be separated from love for the poor

“The dignity of every human person must be respected today, not tomorrow” (92).

“Serving the poor is not a gesture to be made ‘from above’, but an encounter between equals, where Christ is revealed and adored… Therefore, when the Church bends down to care for the poor, she assumes her highest posture” (79).

Women, victims of violence and exclusion

The Holy Father likewise considers the current situation, recalling the countless people who die every day “due to lack of food and water” (12).

Similarly, we must not forget those women, the “doubly poor… who endure situations of exclusion, mistreatment and violence, since they are frequently less able to defend their rights”, he adds, quoting Francis (12).

‘The poor are not there by chance’

Pope Leo XIV offers an in-depth reflection on the causes of poverty: “The poor are not there by chance or by blind and cruel fate. Nor, for most of them, is poverty a choice”, he says. “Yet, there are those who still presume to make this claim, thus revealing their own blindness and cruelty” (14).

While recognizing that “among the poor there are also those who do not want to work, perhaps because their ancestors, who worked all their lives, died poor”, the Pope highlights that there are “so many others — men and women — who nonetheless work from dawn to dusk, perhaps collecting scraps or the like, even though they know that their hard work will only help them to scrape by, but never really improve their lives” (14).

In one of the main points of Dilexi Te, Pope Leo insists that it cannot be said “that most of the poor are such because they do not ‘deserve’ otherwise, as maintained by that specious view of meritocracy that sees only the successful as ‘deserving’” (14).

Ideologies and political orientations

Sometimes, Pope Leo observes, Christians themselves allow themselves to succumb to attitudes shaped by “secular ideologies or political and economic approaches that lead to gross generalizations and mistaken conclusions” (15).

Almsgiving often disparaged

A symptom of this mentality is the fact that the exercise of charity is sometimes dismissed or ridiculed “as if [it] were an obsession on the part of a few and not the burning heart of the Church’s mission” (15). The Holy Father dwells at length on almsgiving, which in our day is “rarely practiced”, and “even at times disparaged” (115).

Indifference on the part of Christians

Along the same lines, the Pope acknowledges that “at times, Christian movements or groups have arisen which show little or no interest in the common good of society and, in particular, the protection and advancement of its most vulnerable and disadvantaged members” (112).

Again quoting Francis, Pope Leo warns that if “any Church community” does not cooperate “in helping the poor to live with dignity and reaching out to everyone”, it will “risk breaking down, however much it may talk about social issues or criticize governments. It will easily drift into a spiritual worldliness camouflaged by religious practices, unproductive meetings and empty talk” (113).

The witness of saints, blesseds, and religious orders

In contrast to this attitude of indifference, there is a world of saints, blesseds, and missionaries who, over the centuries, have embodied the image of “a poor Church for the poor” (110), from Francis of Assisi and his gesture of embracing a leper (7), to Mother Teresa, a “universal icon of charity” dedicated to the most destitute in India, who accompanied the dying “with the tenderness of prayer” (77).

The Pope also recalls the witness of Saints including Lawrence, Justin, Ambrose, and John Chrysostom; as well as Saint Augustine, who stated: “Anyone who says they love God and has no compassion for the needy is lying”, a reference to 1 John 4:20 (45).

Pope Leo points to the work of the Camillians for the sick (50), and of the women's congregations in hospitals and nursing homes (51). He notes the welcome given to widows, abandoned children, pilgrims, and beggars in Benedictine monasteries (55); and recalls the Franciscans, Dominicans, Carmelites, and Augustinians who initiated “an evangelical revolution” through a “simple and poor lifestyle” (63); as well as the Trinitarians and Mercedarians who, fighting for the liberation of prisoners, expressed the love of “a God who frees not only from spiritual slavery but also from concrete oppression” (60).

The right to education

Looking to the example of Saint Joseph Calasanz, who founded the first free public school in Europe (69), the Pope emphasizes the importance of educating the poor, which “is not a favour but a duty” (72).

The efforts of popular movements

In the exhortation, the Pope also mentions the fight against the “destructive effects of the empire of money” (81) by popular movements, led by leaders often “viewed with suspicion and even persecuted” (80). Popular movements, he writes, “invite us to overcome ‘the idea of social policies being a policy for the poor, but never with the poor and never of the poor, much less part of a project which can bring people back together’” (81).

The duty of making our voices heard

In the final pages of the document, Leo XIV reminds every member of the People of God of their duty to “make their voices heard, albeit in different ways, in order to point out and denounce such structural issues, even at the cost of appearing foolish or naïve” (97).

The poor at the heart of the Church

“It is evident”, Pope Leo says “that all of us must ‘let ourselves be evangelized’ by the poor” (102).

“No Christian can regard the poor simply as a societal problem”, he insists; rather “they are part of our ‘family’. They are ‘one of us’”. And so, he says, “our relationship to the poor” cannot “be reduced to merely another ecclesial activity or function” (104).