Pope Leo on poverty: Not just the voice of Pope Francis (News/Analysis)
October 09, 2025
“For us Christians,” the problem of the poor leads to the very heart of our faith,” writes Pope Leo XIV in his apostolic exhortation Dilexi Te, released on October 9. In this, the first major teaching document of his pontificate, Pope Leo insists that care for the poor is an essential and obligatory aspect of the life of faith.The title of the document, Dilexi Te (“I have loved you”) is a quotation from the Book of Revelation—which, as the Pope reminds his readers, was a message to the early Christian community “that, unlike some others, had no influence or resources.” But it is also a reference to Dilexit Nos, the fourth and final encyclical of his predecessor, Pope Francis, which reflected on the immeasurable love offered by the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
Pope Francis had planned to follow up that encyclical with a message on care for the poor, and was drafting that document in the last months of his life. Pope Leo used that draft as the basis for his own document, editing and reworking it to produce the 20,000-word apostolic exhortation that was made public today.
Demanding ‘a change in mentality’
Like his predecessors—not only Pope Francis but Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI—Pope Leo argues that an authentic Christian campaign against poverty requires a spiritual renewal, an effort to reform society. “A concrete commitment to the poor must also be accompanied by a change in mentality that can have an impact on the cultural level,” he writes. He decries a culture of consumption, a “throwaway society,” a rising tide of inequality, and a belief that free-market competition alone will resolve social and economic problems.
However, while he sees “structures of sin” at work in the world today, and denounces the “dictatorship of an economy that kills,” Pope Leo does not devote his attention to proposed political solutions to the problems that he describes. The main thrust of his apostolic exhortation is to seek a change of heart, a recognition of the urgency of the problem and of the undeniable fact that care for the poor has always been a central work of the Church. We cannot ignore the cry of a neighbor in need, the Pope writes: “If we remain unresponsive to that cry, the poor might well cry out to the Lord against us, and we would incur guilt (cf.Deut15:9) and turn away from the very heart of God.”
But, how, exactly, should the faithful go about that work today? Dilexi Te does not endorse any political agenda. In fact, significantly, when he reaches the final passage of his exhortation, Pope Leo writes not about welfare programs or economic reforms but “Almsgiving Today.” He notes that the wealthy can draw their own benefits—not only spiritual—from individual contact with the needy, as “almsgiving will touch and soften our hardened hearts.” Personal involvement and care bring people together in the bonds of love that should always mark the Christian community.
“Lives can be actually turned around by the realization that the poor have much to teach us about the Gospel and its demands,” the Pope writes. “By their silent witness, they make us confront the precariousness of our existence.” At the same time he reminds the faithful that simply filling the material needs of the poor is not the ideal solution, insofar as it perpetuates the relationship of dependency, and so “the most important way to help the disadvantaged is to assist them in finding a good job.”
The Preferential Option for the Poor
Before reaching that final section of Dilexi Te, Pope Leo devotes the bulk of his work to a discussion of how the Church has served the poor throughout history. Jesus Himself chose to live in poverty, he observes, and in the Gospels the Lord insists on care for one’s neighbor. “Jesus’ teaching on the primacy of love for God is clearly complemented by his insistence that one cannot love God without extending one’s love to the poor.”
From the earliest days of Christianity, the Pontiff writes, the Church served the poor. He cites Church fathers and saints, from St. John Chrysostom and St. Augustine to Mother Teresa, on the moral obligation to ease the sufferings of those in need and to recognize the face of Jesus Christ in the poor. He traces the history of Church efforts to help the poor: the care of the sick, the hospitality offered by monastic communities, the programs to ransom slaves and prisoners, the witness of the mendicant orders, the schools for poor children. He quotes St. Gregory the Great: “Every minute we can find a Lazarus if we seek him, and every day, even without seeking, we find one at our door.”
Pope Leo also observes:
In fact, there are many forms of poverty: the poverty of those who lack material means of subsistence, the poverty of those who are socially marginalized and lack the means to give voice to their dignity and abilities, moral and spiritual poverty, cultural poverty, the poverty of those who find themselves in a condition of personal or social weakness or fragility, the poverty of those who have no rights, no space, no freedom.
Moreover, he continues, “the old forms of poverty that we have become aware of and are trying to combat are being joined by new ones, sometimes more subtle and dangerous.”
Following that tour through the history of the Church’s work for the poor, Pope Leo offers a quick survey of Catholic social teaching on the subject. The document offers only a few lines on the teaching of Pope Leo XIII (a surprisingly cursory treatment, given that Pope Leo XIV chose to take the same name as the Pontiff who inaugurated the field of Catholic social teaching). Instead he relies very heavily on Pope Francis—no doubt incorporating much of the material from his predecessor’s draft document. The result is, predictably, some of the harshest language in the apostolic exhortation, as when Pope Leo quotes at length from Evangelii Gaudium, citing “a dominant mindset that considers normal or reasonable what is merely selfishness and indifference.”
Or again, from the same document by Pope Francis, in a denunciation of economic inequalities: "This imbalance is the result of ideologies that defend the absolute autonomy of the marketplace and financial speculation. Consequently, they reject the right of states, charged with vigilance for the common good, to exercise any form of control." I am at a loss to identify any ideology—let alone one that has attained enough political power to enact its program—that would deny the state's right to "any form of control." That sort of intemperate rhetoric detracts from the moral authority of a papal exhortation.
The New Pope’s Distinctive Voice
This first teaching document from Pope Leo was fated to be controversial, for two major reasons. First, the subject matter can easily be viewed from a political perspective, and so pundits from both the political Left and Right will either endorse or denounce the document without giving more than lip service to its religious message. This is especially unfortunate because so many people—sadly including so many Catholics—will derive their impressions about the apostolic exhortation from secular media reports, rather than from reading the document itself.
Second, Dilexi Te was sure to be scrutinized carefully for evidence of whether Pope Leo would continue faithfully in the footsteps of Pope Francis, pushing for radical changes in the Church, or would opt for a restoration of stability and a return of the safer harbors of Catholic tradition. The facts that he took up an unfinished work of his predecessor, quoted him extensively, and praised his work unstintingly might suggest the latter approach. Yet the calmer voice of Pope Leo comes through clearly in this document; the efforts to read Dilexi Te as a condemnation of the Trump administration or an endorsement of the New World Order are bound to be more labored.
In an interesting reaction to the apostolic exhortation for Our Sunday Visitor, Michael Heinlein wrote:
There is no denying that the Church Leo now leads is much more divided and polarized than the Church inherited by his predecessor. For ecclesial unity to be nurtured, particularly after a pontificate that was content to let divisions simmer, Leo needs to take the best of Francis and situate it squarely within the Church’s tradition—something Francis himself often had difficulty doing. Leo must also ‘thread the needle’ as he seeks common ground between the church’s factions and looks for ways to build consensus and communion. From this perspective alone, and to Leo’s great credit, it appears Dilexi Te quite adroitly achieves these goals.
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Further information:
- Apostolic Exhortation “Dilexi te” of the Holy Father Leo XIV to all Christians on Love for the Poor (Vatican)
- Pope Leo: Faith cannot be separated from love for the poor (Vatican News)
- Peter reminds us that the poor are the heart of the Gospel (Vatican News editorial)
- Pope Leo Calls on Christians to Care for the Poor in His First Teaching (New York Times)
- Pope Leo blasts economy that marginalizes poor while wealthy live in bubble of luxury, Pope Leo XIV has blasted how wealthy people live in a “bubble of comfort and luxury” while the poor suffer (AP)
- Analysis: 'Dilexi Te' Defined by Charity, Continuity, and Unity (OSV)
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Posted by: Lucius49 -
Today 6:49 PM ET USA
The Church å cared for the poor for centuries. Poverty is not simply caused by the economy or the greedy rich. There are many factors contributing to poverty one of which, is the epidemic of fatherless and broken families. The Pope also ignores the elephant in the room: the promotion of the LGBTQ ideolgy by bishops/clergy/laity in the Church, with the excuse of todos todos,an ideology which rejects the Church’s teaching on the nuclear family and sexuality and sexual immorality.
