An article by prof. Dalbem M.P., published on the blog of Accademia Alfonsiana
Last October 4th, under the powerful symbol of the feast of St. Francis, we welcomed with great joy the Apostolic Exhortation of Pope Leo XIV, Dilexi te, on love for the poor. It is, therefore, the first magisterial document of this pontificate.
Similar to Lumen fidei, Dilexi te had already been begun by Pope Bergoglio in his final months of life and was then accepted by the new Pope, who completed and published it. In clear and explicit continuity with Francis’s Dilexit nos, the document expresses the strong bond between love of God and love for the poor.
With this document, Pope Leo continues the teaching of his predecessors: from John XXIII’s Mater et Magistra, which exhorts the Church and humanity not to remain indifferent to the suffering of countries oppressed by hunger and poverty, to Francis, who has repeatedly expressed the desire for a Church that is poor with the poor, making the fight against the social mechanisms that kill, oppress, and divide a constant theme in his teaching.
The document has a very clear structure, divided into five chapters. While in the first chapter Leo lays out the necessary prerequisites for reflection on the care of the poor, in the second and third the reader is led on a historical journey of faith, ranging from the biblical experience of the Old and New Testaments, through the Holy Fathers, religious orders, saints such as Teresa of Calcutta, Dulce of the Poor, and Charles de Foucauld, to more recent popular movements. In the fourth chapter, Pope Prevost revisits the heritage of the Social Doctrine of the Church, recovering important elements for theological and social reflection, such as, for example, the pernicious presence of structures of sin in our social fabric. This long reflective journey traced within the document clarifies how concern for the poor has always been present as an essential element of the ecclesial journey of faith (cf. DT, 103). Finally, in the fifth chapter, Pope Leo takes up the evangelical figure of the Good Samaritan (see DT, 105), already used by Pope Francis in Fratelli tutti, to motivate a Church that is attentive, supportive and at the service of others, especially the poorest and most abandoned.
Love for the poor: a hallmark of being Christian
“The Christian cannot consider the poor merely as a social problem: they are a ‘family matter.’ They are ‘one of us'” (DT, 104). With this sentence, Pope Leo clearly establishes the starting point from which the Christian is called to understand his or her relationship with the poorest and most abandoned. They are not simply objects of theoretical analysis, they are not just any object of external observation and manipulation, they are not a term of mere welfare, but rather they are human persons bearing an inalienable dignity who, in Christ, are brothers/members of the same ecclesial body of which He is the Head. Christian charity is thus understood as love between brothers; as the Pope states, a “family matter.”
The hermeneutic horizon changes. The perception of reality is purified, abandoning superficial beneficence, thus moving toward the horizon of Revelation, finding the foundations of humanity in the very Mystery of the Incarnation: “Contact with those who lack power and greatness is a fundamental way of encountering the Lord of history. In the poor, He still has something to say to us” (DT, 5).
Thus, every form of exploitation that generates misery and poverty will be understood as an expression of true violence that disfigures the filial face of Christ present in every human being and crucified in the poorest, most abandoned, and persecuted: “On the wounded faces of the poor we find imprinted the suffering of the innocent and, therefore, the very suffering of Christ” ( DT, 9). This is a true abomination, a profanation of the living temple of God.
Approaching the problem of poverty from this perspective, where Christ’s disciple sees himself personally involved, necessitates a necessary distancing from many superficial, tendentious, ideologically driven, and diabolical visions present in the contemporary world. Just as the Jesus of the Gospels often raised his voice, Dilexi te, already in its opening paragraphs (cf. DT, 14-15), distances itself from that sort of vision, so common today in neoliberal thought forms, in which poverty is reduced to a simple question of merit or destiny. Remaining within the superficiality of this vision masks the exploitation of so many men and women enslaved by a system that seeks to transform them into mere spare parts for the great production machine of the prevailing systems of power. Amid such generalizing interpretations and ideologies, there is a tendency to reduce the meaning of “charity” to simple, sporadic acts of giving that end in the very exteriority of the act, serving simply to liberate the conscience. On the contrary, the exercise of charity understood as an experience of filial/fraternal love founded on the very reality of the Incarnation, is configured as the “incandescent nucleus of the ecclesial mission” (DT, 15). The many voices of our day that want a ” light Christianity “, which leaves room for superficial and utilitarian readings, disengaged from humanity, distance themselves “from the living current of the Church that flows from the Gospel and fertilizes every historical moment” (DT, 15).
At the very heart of the Mystery of the Incarnation, the preferential option for the poor arises as a movement of Love/God’s Kingdom that seeks to reach all creatures. This concept permeates the entire document, representing, in our view, one of the great conceptual shifts made in this exhortation. Further exploration of this topic will be the subject of our next contribution (continued 1/5).
