Signed on 4 October and released today, the document continues the work begun by Pope Francis. In five chapters and 121 points, it addresses the many "faces" of poverty – material, moral, and spiritual – calling for a “change in mentality”.  When the Church bends towards the poor, “she assumes her highest posture.” The document cites Mother Teresa, “who dedicated her life to the dying abandoned on the streets of India” working “with the tenderness of prayer.”

Vatican City (AsiaNews) – Pope Leo XIV’s first apostolic exhortation, Dilexi te, is centred “on love for the poor” embodying this basic truth: “The poor are at the heart of the Church” (111).

Signed on October 4, the feast day of Saint Francis of Assisi, the magisterial document was released today, continuing the work begun by his predecessor Francis in his final months.

The title itself echoes Pope Francis's last encyclical, Dilexit nos, published a year ago.

Divided into five chapters and 121 points, Dilexi te reaffirms the Church's teachings on the poor, already highlighted by the pontiffs of the last century, culminating in the desire for "a Church which is poor and for the poor," a hallmark of the Argentine pope's pontificate.

The title is taken from the Book of Revelation: "I have loved you" (Rev 3:9), words the Lord spoke to a Christian community exposed to “violence and contempt."

In the introduction, the pontiff notes that, with Dilexit Nos, “we saw how Jesus identified himself ‘with the lowest ranks of society’.”  Like Francis, Leo says that he is "happy" to “make this document my own – adding some reflections”.

In the document about the “Church’s care for the poor”, God tells everyone affected by poverty: “‘You have but little power,’ yet ‘I have loved you’.”

Dilexi te emphasises the “many forms of poverty,” its “multifaceted” nature, touching “those who lack material means of subsistence, [. . .] those who are socially marginalized and lack the means to give voice to their dignity and abilities” as well as those who experience “moral and spiritual” as well as “cultural” poverty, prey either to “personal or social weakness or fragility,” or living with “no rights, no space, no freedom.”

For Leo, “On the wounded faces of the poor, we see the suffering of the innocent and, therefore, the suffering of Christ himself” (9). Reaching out to “those who are lowly and powerless is a fundamental way of encountering the Lord of history. In the poor, he continues to speak to us” (5).

Poverty should be understood eschewing “secular ideologies" and a " specious vision of meritocracy." And faced with its breadth, promoting its eradication from the world “remains insufficient," writes the pontiff.

Unfortunately, “societies often favor criteria for orienting life and politics that are marked by numerous inequalities” and even create “new ones, sometimes more subtle and dangerous.”

While there is no shortage of positive examples – Leo XIV underscores the commitment of the United Nations, which “has made the eradication of poverty one of its Millennium Goals” (10), inequality, the throwaway culture, and “dictatorship of an economy that kills” continue to be at “the root of social ills”. This means, “in practice” that “human rights are not equal for all” (94).

Hopefully, the new apostolic exhortation will contribute to a "change in mentality", which must be urgently embraced so that “the dignity of every human person” is “respected today, not tomorrow” (92).

Addressing extensively the issue of migration, Leo cites four verbs used by Pope Francis to describe the mission of the Church towards migrants and refugees: “welcome, protect, promote and integrate” (75). They express actions that embody the service the Church offers to all “those living in the existential peripheries”.

For the pope, “serving the poor is not a gesture to be made ‘from above,’ but an encounter between equals”. In fact, “when the Church bends down to care for the poor, she assumes her highest posture” (79).

Dilexi te addresses several topical issues, which intersect with the fragile condition of people living in poverty.

Among these violence against women stands out, for as Leo writes, women are "doubly poor", due to "exclusion, mistreatment and violence" (12), structural conditions common to different societies and cultures, at every latitude.

Another one is malnutrition, which sees thousands of people die every day (12), as is the right to education, “a fundamental requirement for the recognition of human dignity” (72). In this context, Leo cites Saint Joseph Calasanz, founder of the Pious Schools for poor boys, the first free educational establishment in Europe.

Regarding almsgiving, which some often “dismiss”, the pope urges the faithful “to give alms as a way of reaching out and touching the suffering flesh of the poor” (119).

Noting a widespread "indifference" towards marginalised people in many Christian communities, an attitude that can even lead to their "breaking down", Leo underlines the examples of men and women in religious orders who have captivated the "poor Church" for almost two thousand years (103).

One of them is Saint Teresa of Kolkata (Calcutta), a “universal icon of charity [who] lived to the fullest extent in favor of the most destitute, those discarded by society” (77).

The Macedonian-born nun dedicated her life to people dying in “the streets of India”, where “She gathered the rejected, washed their wounds and accompanied them to the moment of death with the tenderness of prayer,” writes the pope.

Her practised and tormented existence was the result of “a deep spirituality that saw service to the poorest as the fruit of prayer and love”.

Finally, in the last chapter, titled “A constant challenge,” Leo XIV writes that, for Christians, the poor must not be seen a “societal problem”, but as “part of our ‘family’” (104).

“The dominant culture at the beginning of this millennium would have us abandon the poor to their fate and consider them unworthy of attention, much less our respect” (105).

In reality, “we are still ‘illiterate’ when it comes to accompanying, caring for and supporting the most frail and vulnerable members of our developed societies. We have become accustomed to looking the other way,” the pontiff laments.

Instead, poverty today should lead “to the very heart of our faith” (110). As Saint John Paul II put it, for the Church, this “preferential option [. . .] is essential for her and a part of her constant tradition”.

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