Photo credit Vatican News
By Dr Greg Marcar
On October 24, 2024, Pope Francis published his final encyclical, Dilexit Nos (‘On the Human and Divine Love of the Heart of Jesus Christ’). On the Feast Day of Saint Francis (October 4, 2025), Pope Francis had planned the release of Dilexi Te (‘On Love for the Poor’). It has subsequently been given as an Apostolic Exhortation by Pope Leo XIV on October 9, 2025 (the feast day of the Church’s latest Doctor of the Church, Saint John Henry Newman).
Pope Leo XIV begins by highlighting how “poverty” is not a homogenous condition. Poverty, Dilexi Te notes, is capable of assuming many different forms, including “the poverty of those who lack material means of subsistence”, the poverty of the “socially marginalized”, and moral, spiritual, or cultural poverties (§9). The recognition of poverty here as a multifaceted phenomenon has important implications, not least of which is that any approach towards human poverty that only draws upon economic data as its metric will be incomplete; systems, prejudices, and inequalities must also be part of the picture. Notably, the exhortation invites us to notice and consider “the poverty of those who have no rights, no space, no freedom” (§9, emphasis added).
Drawing on the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10) and its employment by Pope Francis in his social encyclical, Fratelli Tutti, Dilexi Te subsequently urges us to resist a “dominant culture” that minimises, sidelines or neglects the poor as persons that should be attended to. In this, Dilexi Te draws upon the teaching of Pope Francis in Dilexit Nos concerning the “structure of sin” within society that renders it “normal to ignore the poor and live as if they do not exist” (§93). We are, Dilexi Te cautions, still functionally “illiterate” when it comes to seeing and reading the needs of the poor (§105). We do not properly care for the poor because we are immersed in a culture that too often renders their needs invisible.
The need to attend to those in need—as the Samaritan did in Luke 10—is not simply a matter of socio-political policy; rather, it is of soteriological importance. “The attention due to them, rather than a mere social requirement, is a condition for salvation” (§42).
To illustrate this, Pope Leo XIV draws on Saint John Chrysostom’s reflections on the rich man and Lazarus (Luke 16). During his life, the rich man did not provide alms to Lazarus, who was nearby and in desperate need. After their deaths, Lazarus is received into the “vale” or “bosom” of Abraham, while the rich man finds himself in a place of desperate need analogous to that which he had previously sanctioned for Lazarus. Chrysostom cautions that “not giving to the poor is stealing from them, defrauding them of their lives, because what we have belongs to them” (§42, citing John Chrysostom, Homilia II De Lazaro, 6).
As Pope Leo XIV goes on to note, the same sentiments were expressed by “Augustine’s spiritual guide”, Saint Ambrose, who writes that “[w]hat you give to the poor is not your property, but theirs”, and further asks “[w]hy have you appropriated what was given for common use?” (§43, citing Ambrose, De Nabuthae, 12). In this, Pope Leo XIV (following the Church fathers’ lead) affirms that all of creation is given by the Creator for the needs of His creatures. The failure of those who are “rich” to attend to the needs of the poor is therefore tantamount to a form of theft.
By reminding us of this reality, Dilexi Te powerfully underscores the need for us to reconfigure our moral attention towards the poor with a warning that not paying such attention may come at a heavy price.
Dr. Greg Marcar is the Senior Researcher at Te Kupenga – Nathaniel Centre for Bioethics.
