Rome – Today the Vatican has released a landmark apostolic exhortation, Dilexi te, promulgated by Pope Leo XIV. The following summary highlights its announcement and major themes, with particular attention to their relevance for Catholic professionals seeking to shape culture and public life in light of the Gospel.
A Timely Exhortation for a Church Engaged with the Poor
Pope Leo XIV opens Dilexi te by recalling the words of Christ: “I have loved you.” These words frame the document’s central conviction: the relationship between Christ’s love and the Christian responsibility toward the poor. The exhortation builds in continuity with Pope Francis’s encyclicals and teachings, and Leo XIV acknowledges that his predecessor had prepared in his final months a text under the same title, which he now “makes his own” and expands.
By issuing it early in his pontificate, Leo XIV signals that this is not a secondary or optional teaching: it is foundational for his vision of the Church’s mission in the world. In his foreword he states that love for the Lord is one with love for the poor. The document is addressed to all Christians, and it calls for an integral conversion of mind, heart, institutions, and systems.
Major Themes of Dilexi te
While the exhortation is dense, six central threads stand out especially for professionals engaged in public life.
1. The Preferential Love of God for the Poor
Leo XIV reaffirms strongly the doctrine that God chooses the poor. He roots this in biblical revelation and in the Incarnation, Christ’s self-emptying and solidarity with the lowly. God’s preference does not exclude others but calls the Church to adopt a radical orientation toward those who suffer injustice and exclusion.
2. The Unity of Love for God and Love for Neighbor
One of the document’s constant refrains is that love of God and love of neighbor are inseparable. To love God in abstract is insufficient unless it is expressed concretely in service to the poorest. Leo XIV emphasizes that acts of mercy are not auxiliary but integral to Christian worship, normative to faith.
3. A “Church for the Poor” in Structure and Identity
The exhortation insists that the Church must herself adopt a posture of solidarity with the poor. She cannot be divided from them or behave as a privileged elite. Leo XIV revisits the testimony of the early Church, the Fathers, and the religious orders as examples of a Church that lives “with the poor,” not merely “for the poor.” In his view, ecclesial structures, leadership, and pastoral priorities must be shaped by this logic.
4. Care for the Marginalized in Multiple Forms
Dilexi te does not reduce poverty to one dimension. Leo XIV names many faces of poverty: material deprivation, social exclusion, cultural marginalization, moral and spiritual fragility, and impoverishment of rights, voice, and dignity. He calls for special attention to those who are doubly impoverished, women facing violence and exclusion, migrants, the imprisoned, and victims of human trafficking, and underscores that new forms of structural poverty demand systemic conversion, not mere charity.
5. Love that Frees and Elevates
The exhortation emphasizes that Christian charity must have a liberative thrust. The Church is called to “free the captives,” to act decisively against modern forms of slavery and structural injustice. Education and human formation are also central: Leo XIV highlights examples throughout ecclesial history of schools for the poor, knowledge as empowerment and dignity, and cultural inclusion. Migrants are also emphasized: the Church’s mission includes welcome, protection, and integration.
6. Conversion, Witness, and Professional Responsibility
Finally, and of particular importance to Catholic professionals, Leo XIV insists on personal and institutional conversion. The exhortation issues a challenge to those who shape culture, laws, business, media, health care, education, and public policy: the preferential option for the poor cannot remain a slogan but must transform how society acts, plans, resources, legislates, manages, and leads. Acts of love must be coherent, strategic, sustainable, and prophetic.
Leo XIV warns that Christians have too often conformed to secular ideologies or distorted economic systems. He invites every Christian, especially those in positions of influence, to reread the Gospel, recalibrate priorities, and ensure that structures and decisions reflect, not obscure, the demands of mercy.
Invitation to Engagement
For Catholic professionals dedicated to influencing the world for Christ, Dilexi te serves as both a summons and a map. It calls leaders in business, public service, academia, healthcare, media, law, and culture to root their work in the logic of love and justice. It calls not for sentimental gestures but for coherence in structures, courage in reforms, solidarity in priorities, and consistency in witness.
Readers are encouraged to study Dilexi te in full and to reflect on how its message speaks to their own fields of work. Decisions, institutional cultures, policies, networks, and investment choices can all become means through which Christ’s love for the poor is made visible.
In a world marked by hidden suffering, the exhortation offers not only critique but hope: the hope that Christians can, by God’s grace, transform structures and lives so that the poor cease to be invisible and become true neighbors, equal members of God’s household.
Read the full Apostolic Exhortation Dilexi te from the Vatican website.
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