Dilexi Te (I have loved you) originated in the mind and heart of Pope Francis, who intended to issue an exhortation on care for the poor as a companion to his final encyclical, Dilexit Nos (He loved us) “on divine and human love of the heart of Jesus Christ” and the popular devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Choosing to complete his predecessor’s pastoral plan, Pope Leo XIV shares that he is “happy to make this document my own—adding some reflections—and to issue it” (DT, para. 3). While taking up teaching in development has likely happened in the past, it is noteworthy that both Pope Leo and Pope Francis choose to share publicly the decision to do so. In his case, Pope Francis noted the encyclical Lumen Fidei, his first major teaching document, began as a draft of his predecessor’s to which he “added a few contributions of [his] own” (LF, para. 7). In doing so, both Leo and Francis began their pontificates by inviting the faithful to reflect upon discipleship within the fullness of the Christian tradition. In his first major document, Pope Leo XIV invites the faithful to explore the Christian tradition and “appreciate the close connection between Christ’s love and his summons to care for the poor” (DT, para. 3). Dilexi Te presents love for the poor as integral to the Church’s social ethics and at the very heart of discipleship. Pedagogically, Pope Leo XIV teaches us that, from the very first Christians to our contemporary social teaching, “Love for the Lord, then, is one with love for the poor.” (DT, para. 7). As such, the moral call of discipleship remains a duty that is both constant and always evolving.
Dilexi Te presents love for the poor as integral to the Church’s social ethics and at the very heart of discipleship.
Even though today’s social and economic systems are radically different from earlier historical moments, today’s pressing moral concerns about poverty and inequality are not new and Catholic social teaching has a long tradition from which to draw. In this reflection, I propose Dilexi Te is an invitation to reflect upon the social teaching alongside the early Church through which we can better appreciate the need to focus on extreme inequality and the moral imperative of encountering the poor as dignified agents.
Recognizing Continuity and Development in a Rapidly Changing World
In 1891, amidst the rapid technological and economic change of the Industrial Revolution, Pope Leo XIII issued Rerum Novarum, literally “of new things,” to address the changing nature of labor and work. He began by taking stock of the pressing moral issues of his day and noting, “Nothing is more useful than to look upon the world as it really is, and at the same time to seek elsewhere, as We have said, for the solace to its troubles.” (RN,para. 18). In this, two methodological points emerge: first, the need to engage the world as it is, including concrete scientific and social-scientific data, even if said data contradicts previous assumptions; and second, that there is a place for the Church or faith in moral reflection upon today’s ethical issues. Similarly to how Leo XIII (d. 1903) drew upon both the Christian tradition and secular philosophy, Rerum Novarum also recognized that social, political, and economic changes called for the Church to respond anew. As the social magisterium developed, so too did a new way of invoking continuity and development.
In each new encyclical, prior encyclicals were the most commonly cited sources outside of Scripture. Many new documents were released on anniversaries of either Rerum Novarum or later Paul VI’s Populorum Progressio adding to the intentional crafting of the social magisterium as a discrete space within the larger Christian moral tradition. Both John Paul II’s Soliictudo Rei Socialis and Benedict XVI’s Caritas in Veritate dedicate the first chapter of their encyclicals to Populorum Progressio to set the stage for addressing the new moral issues of their day. A mix of encyclicals and apostolic exhortations, Catholic social teaching developed with a methodological framework that applied its moral principles to contemporary problems. While the influence of St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Augustine received attention, the connections to the broader Christian moral tradition were rarely the subject of sustained investigation in either the encyclicals themselves or in their promulgation.
Amidst the reception of Pope Francis’s Fratelli Tutti in 2020, the need to draw out the connections between this document and wider Christian tradition became clearer to me. As the world grappled with dual crises of increasing inequality and the COVID-19 pandemic, Fratelli Tutti reminded us that “The right to private property can only be considered a secondary natural right derived from the principle of the universal destination of created goods” (FT, para. 120). Immediately upon its release, I received multiple press inquiries asking for comment on what journalists and Catholic media influencers saw as Pope Francis’s “new teaching” on the universal destination of created goods. Perplexed, I responded that this was not new but one of Christianity’s oldest moral teachings.
A mix of encyclicals and apostolic exhortations, Catholic social teaching developed with a methodological framework that applied its moral principles to contemporary problems.
Catholic social teaching has always framed private property within a larger “social mortgage,” as John Paul II famously stated (SRS, para. 42). Catholicism firmly holds that God created all persons with equal dignity and the goods of creation for the flourishing of all. “God intended the earth with everything contained in it for the use of all human beings and peoples,” (GS, para. 69) summarized as the universal destination of goods. This is the primary moral principle from which private property is derived can be consistently traced through the tradition. Fratelli Tutti’s references to the Early Church and earlier invocation of the universal destination of common goods by Paul VI, John Paul II, and Benedict XVI did not capture the imagination of our contemporary culture, obsessed with private property and consumption. Because of this, many assumed Francis must be interjecting something new into the tradition.
Dilexi Te: Reflecting on the Social Magisterium with the Patristics
In just over one hundred paragraphs, Dilexi Te swiftly traces the constant moral urgency of concern for the poor and the many historical moments in which the Church has sought to respond concretely to care for the poor. In this limited reflection, I focus on the connection between the call to be a church for the poor in the Patristics as paralleled with the current teaching of the social magisterium.
Listening to the Patristics: Moral Consequences of Economic Structures and Inequality
“The poor are not there by chance or by blind and cruel fate,” Dilexi Te explains, “nor for most of them, is poverty a choice” (DT, para. 14). Attention to the dignity and needs of the poor was a priority “in the daily life of the first Christian community” (DT, para. 32). From the Acts of the Apostles to the Didache (2nd Century), the unequivocal need to care for the poor has always been a central part of Christian discipleship. St. Justin preached that “it is not possible to separate the worship of God from concern for the poor” (DT, para. 40). During the Patristic period, moral reflection on poverty included attention to the economic structures in which great wealth was accumulated alongside dire poverty.
St. John Chyrsostom, Pope Leo shares, “vehemently denounced excessive wealth connected with indifference for the poor. The attention due to them, rather than a mere social requirement, is a condition for salvation, which gives unjust wealth a condemnatory weight.” (DT, para. 42). For Chrysostom, the critique of the economic system is evident in his argument that a failure to give to the poor is “stealing from them, defrauding them of their lives, because what we have belongs to them” (DT 42 – John Chrysostom, Homilia II De Lazaro, 6: PG 48, Paris 1862, 992.)
This moral caution regarding wealth and private property is also found in St. Ambrose, for whom, “almsgiving is social justice restored, not a gesture of paternalism.” (DT 43). As his journey into the Church fathers continues, Pope Leo highlights the connections for St. Augustine between the love of the poor and the love of Christ and the requirement that for charity or almsgiving to be meritorious requires conversion (DT 44-47). To follow Christ, one must make the dignity of the poor a priority. One cannot faithfully worship Christ otherwise; the Early Church fathers clearly make this point. At the same time, their recognition of the systemic connection between wealth and poverty is important for understanding later social teaching’s articulation of our moral obligation to combat the structural causes of poverty and inequality.
“History Continues:” Social Magisterium within the Christian Tradition
In the selection of his papal name, Leo XIV immediately indicated his commitment to modern Catholic social teaching. “The epochal change we are now undergoing,” he explains, “makes even more necessary a constant interaction between the faithful and the Church’s Magisterium, between ordinary citizens and experts, between individuals and institutions” and reiterating that “the poor are possessed of unique insights indispensable to the Church and to humanity as a whole.” (DT, para. 82). In Chapter Four: “A History That Continues,” Pope Leo offers his interpretation.
Journeying through Catholic social teaching, we are reminded of the way Leo XIII “addressed the labor question pointing to the intolerable living conditions of many industrial workers and arguing for a just social order,” reiterating and expanding upon John XXIII’s call for global justice in Mater et Magistra (DT, para. 83). Vatican II, John XXIII, and Paul VI all sought to call the church back to a focus on the poor. Leo reminds us that Cardinal Lecaro even saw concern for the poor as “the theme of the council as a whole.” (DT, para. 84). Once again, Gaudium et Spes “forcefully reaffirms the universal destination of earthly goods and the social function of property that derives from it” (DT , para. 86; cf. GS, paras. 69, 71). With a doctrinal focus, John Paul II explained the “Church’s preferential relationship with the poor” while drawing attention anew to the dignity of human work (DT, para. 87).
The depths of social alienation in recent years, which Pope Francis labeled as part of a culture of indifference, is a worsening problem wherein it ‘becomes normal to ignore the poor and live as if they do not exist.’
In these critiques of our current economic structures, we hear echoes of the early Church calling us to conversion. Again, we see the connection between wealth and poverty, where excessive inequality requires social and political solutions. Pope Leo notes that in Caritas in veritate “Benedict XVI took a more distinctly political turn” explicitly highlighting that the problem is not a lack of resources (such as sufficient food or clean water) but a lack of political will to create structures which prioritize meeting the basic needs of all (DT, para. 88). When Pope Francis called for the need to “denounce the dictatorship of an economy that kills” (DT, para. 92, cf. Evangelii Gaudium, para. 202), he was echoing the consistent cry of his predecessors in the social magisterium. The depths of social alienation in recent years, which Pope Francis labeled as part of a culture of indifference, is a worsening problem wherein it “becomes normal to ignore the poor and live as if they do not exist. It then seems reasonable to organize the economy in such a way that sacrifices are demanded of the masses in order to serve the needs of the powerful” (DT, para. 93). If space allowed, there is more that one could examine here, especially on Pope Francis’s teaching and Pope Leo’s examination the Latin American and Caribbean Episcopal Council ‘s contribution to the social magisterium. The pedagogical trajectory I have sought to spotlight is presented in this apostolic exhortation, which emphasizes care for the poor as integrally connected to the analysis of economic justice in the social teaching, in deep continuity with the teaching of the Early Church.
A Church of and with the Poor Together
“Being Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction.” (Deus caritas est, 1). While it is not cited in Dilexi te, it is the Christological conviction that animates Pope Leo’s exhortation, reminding all Christians that it is in encountering the poor that we encounter Christ. One of the final points Pope Leo XIV focuses on is the need to remember that the poor are not objects but subjects. He focuses in particular on the need for those most affected to be treated as full participants in the development and improvement of their own communities (DT, para. 96). The influence of his own experiences in Peru undergirds the strength with which he speaks about the Church’s moral duty to be a church of and with the poor. As I read this exhortation, it reminded of my own experiences listening to and learning from those marginalized by our unrelenting economic system. Ultimately, Dilexi te is a call to accompany the vulnerable, excluded, and marginalized as God accompanies them and to always encounter them as dignified agents and as neighbors. When we become a neighbor to those otherwise excluded, we become a neighbor to Christ—and become a “place of welcome and justice” (DT, para. 39).
This essay originally appeared in Castelvecchi.
