Charity is central to the Gospel, Pope says at Madrid homeless shelter
June 06, 2026
Pope Leo XIV visited a Madrid homeless shelter early this evening (video) and said that charity is central to the Gospel.
The shelter, CEDIA 24 Horas, is operated by Caritas Madrid, the archdiocesan charity.
In his Spanish-language address, Pope Leo said that “CEDIA follows the path of the Gospel, following in the footsteps of Jesus, the Son of God who became man not only to heal our illnesses and miseries, but to make them his own—except sin—living as one of us in weakness and identifying himself with every person who suffers, to the point of saying to us: ‘As you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me’“ (Mt 25:40).
Reflecting on the motto of his apostolic journey—“Lift up your eyes” (John 4:35)—Pope Leo said that Christ’s words “are an invitation to contemplate the fields that, when ripe, await the harvest, and remind us that charity does not admit delays.”
“If we do not harvest when the wheat is ripe, the harvest is lost, and this is our responsibility to those in need: a responsibility that consecrates each encounter with the other as a kairos, a unique and unrepeatable moment of grace to love, which must not be lost or postponed,” the Pope continued. “Christ’s love pushes us towards our brothers and sisters (cf. 2 Cor 5:14), and the charity and solicitude with which we respond to his impulses are the test of our faith.”
The Pontiff also visited the adjacent Parish of the Crucifixion.
Pope Leo said that he was happy to begin his visit to Spain “in a parish called the Crucifixion, which is a sign not of death but of hope, of new life, of resurrection and of the salvation that Jesus offers to all of us.”
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