The teaching torch has been passed. Pope Leo XIV’s first formal document as pope, the apostolic exhortation Dilexi Te (I Have Loved You), was presented today at 11:30 a.m. Rome time. The exhortation is the completion of work begun by Pope Francis before he died—a striking resemblance to Francis’s own first document, the encyclical Lumen Fidei (The Light of Faith), which completed work begun by Pope Benedict XVI before his resignation.
And just as Lumen Fidei celebrated one of the central themes of Benedict, Dilexi Te celebrates one of the central themes of Francis—namely, the love of the poor. Here are three key takeaways from this first major teaching document of the first American pope.
1: Continuity with Pope Francis
Francis, Leo writes in the introduction, “was preparing in the last months of his life an Apostolic Exhortation on the Church’s care for the poor, to which he gave the title Dilexi Te, as if Christ speaks those words to each of them, saying: ‘You have but little power,’ yet ‘I have loved you’ (Rev 3:9). I am happy to make this document my own—adding some reflections—and to issue it at the beginning of my own pontificate” (3).
Care for the poor was, of course, a consistent theme for Francis. He once recalled how, upon his election to the papacy, a cardinal friend embraced him and said, “Do not forget the poor!” (6). And he assuredly didn’t—not only in his formal teaching but also in his practical witness. Right to the end, he called for “a Church which is poor and for the poor” (35).
The tone set in this brief tour of Catholic commitment to the poor is that of a pope determined to think with the Church—indeed, with the whole Church, in all its rich magisterial, theological, and pastoral history.
With Dilexi Te, Leo has picked up this key priority of Francis’s; he shares, he goes on to add, “The desire of my beloved predecessor that all Christians come to appreciate the close connection between Christ’s love and his summons to care for the poor. I too consider it essential to insist on this path to holiness” (3). What’s more, Francis’s voice shines through the exhortation from top to bottom. Indeed, Leo includes over fifty citations of his predecessor’s words, including his three original encyclicals: Laudato Si’, Fratelli Tutti, and Dilexit Nos.
Of special note is paragraph 89, in which Leo comes directly to the fore, mentioning his own time as a missionary in Peru in connection with the Latin American Bishops conferences of Medellín, Puebla, Santo Domingo, and Aparecida. But for the most part, Leo is content to cosign Francis’s own reflections on this theme—a powerful demonstration of both Catholic unity and papal continuity.
2: Thinking with the Church
In the course of Dilexi Te, Leo (with Francis) looks across two thousand years of Church teaching on, and witness to, love for the poor. He begins with the Scriptures, both Old Testament and New (chapter 2), then moves through the Fathers of the Church, monastic tradition, and various saints of social justice (chapter 3). (Paragraph 74 is particularly striking: It finds Leo, the first American pope, reflecting on Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini, the first American saint.)
Finally, he arrives at the Church’s social doctrine over the past 150 years—“a veritable treasury of significant teachings concerning the poor” (83)—including the Second Vatican Council and the teachings of Paul VI, John Paul II, Benedict XVI, and of course Francis (chapter 4), further underscoring his commitment to magisterial continuity. (In paragraph 98, Leo even quotes Ratzinger’s 1984 “Instruction on Certain Aspects of the ‘Theology of Liberation’” for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith—a document that, he writes, “was not initially well received by everyone.”)
The tone set in this brief tour of Catholic commitment to the poor is that of a pope determined to think with the Church—indeed, with the whole Church, in all its rich magisterial, theological, and pastoral history. In fact, the exhortation seems singularly focused on the task. Whereas the first few sections of Dilexit Nos—Francis’s encyclical on the Sacred Heart for which this was intended as an extension—references Homer, Plato, Dostoevsky, and Heidegger, Dilexi Te takes a narrower tack, focusing almost entirely on the Church’s own identity, history, and mission.
3: A Both/And Approach
Having looked at the who and the how of Dilexi Te, we’re still left with the what. What exactly does Dilexi Te tell us about love for the poor?
The exhortation emphasizes, above all, how essential the poor are to Christian life. Charitable works, Leo writes, are “the burning heart of the Church’s mission” (15). In the Incarnation, Christ became poor in the flesh that we might become rich in God (18; see 2 Cor. 8:9), and Christians are called into the same humble descent, touching the suffering flesh of the least among us that we might touch the suffering flesh of Christ (48, 49, 119). And one needn’t limit this, Leo clarifies, to material poverty: “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” (9).
In articulating this essential love for the poor, Leo is cautious to warn against both a pietism that fails to take concrete action (119) and a fight for social justice that fails to translate into religious care (114). Neither of these one-sided approaches to the poor will do. His approach, by contrast, is resolutely “both/and.” Thus, Leo calls for both love for the Lord and love for the poor (5, 8), an extension of the “distinct yet inseparable” loves for God and neighbor (26). He likewise writes of both faith and social action (40), both doctrinal rigor and mercy (48), both prayer and work (53), both piety and dedication to others (71), both proclaiming the Gospel and meeting material needs (77). “The monastic tradition,” he writes, “teaches us that prayer and charity, silence and service, cells and hospitals form a single spiritual fabric” (58).
In paragraph 79, Leo beautifully sums up this both/and approach—and indeed the whole history of the Church’s love for the poor, from the Old Testament prophets through Pope Francis—with a striking paradox: “When the Church bends down to care for the poor, she assumes her highest posture.”