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Pope Leo XIV Has strongly condemned the wealthy elite and accused them of living in a “bubble of comfort and luxury” while poor people are marginalized. His first teaching document, released on Thursday, confirms his complete coordination with his predecessor Pope Francis On social and economic injustice.
Vatican Unveiled the 100-page document, “I Have Loved You,” which Pope Francis began writing in his final months but never finished. Pope Leo, elected in May, attributed the text to Pope Francis, repeatedly citing him, but he made it his own and signed it.
The text traces Christianity’s continuing concern for the poor, from biblical quotations and the Church Fathers to recent papal teachings on migrants, prisoners, and human trafficking victims. Leo praised women’s religious orders for fulfilling God’s command to care for the sick, feed the poor, and welcome strangers, and movements led by lay people advocating land, housing, and work for the underprivileged.
Pope Leo It is concluded that Catholic ChurchThe “preferential option for the poor” has existed from the beginning, it cannot be compromised and is the essence of being Christian. He calls for a renewed commitment to fixing the structural causes of poverty by providing unquestioning charity to those in need.
“When the Church kneels beside a leper, a malnourished child or an anonymous dying person, she fulfills her deepest vocation: to love the Lord where he is most disfigured,” Leo writes.
Quoting Francis who criticized the rich
Pope Leo repeatedly quotes Pope Francis, including some of the Argentinian Pope’s most-quoted statements regarding the global “economy that kills” and his criticism of a declining economy. Pope Francis has said these things since the beginning of his papacy in 2013, saying that he wants a Church that is of the poor and for the poor.
Pope Leo writes, “There is a special place in God’s heart for those who are discriminated against and oppressed and he asks us, his Church, to make a decisive and radical choice in favor of the most vulnerable.”
Echoing Pope Francis, Pope Leo is against the “illusion of happiness” derived from the accumulation of wealth. “Thus, in a world where the number of poor continues to grow, we paradoxically see the growth of a wealthy elite, who live in a bubble of comfort and luxury, almost in a different world than ordinary people.”
Pope Francis’s frequent criticism of capitalism Many conservatives and wealthy Catholics became angryEspecially in the United States, who accused the Argentine Jesuits of being Marxists.
In a recent interview, Pope Leo said that such wrong criticism cannot be leveled against him. “The fact that I’m American, among other things, means people can’t say, as they said about Pope Francis, ‘He doesn’t understand the United States, he just doesn’t see what’s happening,'” Pope Leo told Crux, a Catholic site.
As a result, Pope Leo’s adoption of Francis’ teaching on poverty and the Church’s obligation to care for the most vulnerable is an important reaffirmation, especially in Pope Leo’s first teaching document.
Signed on the Feast of St. Francis
Pope Leo signed the text on October 4, the feast day of St. Francis of Assisi, a 13th-century hermit monk who gave up his wealth to live among the poor. The date was not coincidental.
The late Pope Francis named himself after the saint and one of the Pope’s most important documents, “Fratelli Tutti” (Brothers All), was published in 2020 on the feast of October 4.
Pope Leo also seems to have been inspired by the saint’s example: As a young priest, the former Robert Prevost left the comforts of home to work as a missionary in Peru as a member of the Augustinian religious order, one of other ancient mendicant orders that views community, the sharing of communal property, and service to others as central tenets of its spirituality.
Pope Leo writes, “The fact that some dismiss or ridicule charitable works, as if they were the passion of a few and not the burning heart of the Church’s mission, convinces me of the need to go back and read the Gospel again, lest we risk replacing it with the wisdom of this world.”
A reference to liberation theology
Pope Leo’s emphasis on the church’s centuries-old “preferential option for the poor” is unusual given the Vatican’s troubled history in dealing with liberation theology, the Latin American-inspired Catholic theology whose mantra was “preferential option for the poor.”
The Vatican under St. John Paul II put much effort into fighting liberation theology and disciplining some of its most famous defenders, arguing that they had misinterpreted Jesus’ priority for the poor as a Marxist call for armed rebellion.
In contrast, Pope Leo doubled down on this concept, citing several fundamental documents of the Latin American Church on this issue. He praised St. Oscar Romero, Archbishop of Salvador, who was assassinated by right-wing death squads in 1980 for preaching against the military’s repression of the poor, as an inspiration.
Pope Leo’s text downplayed the controversy over liberation theology by saying that the crackdown taken by the Vatican on its promoters in 1984 “was not well received by all in the beginning.”
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