Pope Leo’s Dilexi Te – A Call to Action

December 9, 2025

By Frederick Fakhrizadeh, M.D.

Pope Leo XIV’s first apostolic exhortation, Dilexi Te, challenges the faithful to approach and interact with the poor in a manner that embraces their dignity and calls us to personal encounter with the poor. This message is particularly urgent today, as global debates on poverty and inequality demand a response rooted in dignity and solidarity.

To quote Pope Leo, “No Christian can regard the poor simply as a societal problem; they are part of our ‘family.’ They are ‘one of us.’ Nor can our relationship with the poor be reduced to merely another ecclesial activity or function (DT 104).” In fact, the poor are not passive recipients of aid but active agents of evangelization.

Dilexi Te is an urgent call to conversion and action, summoning Christians to overcome indifference and to see Christ in the “suffering flesh” of the poor. The condition of the poor is presented as a constant “cry” that challenges individuals, societies, and the Church. To be unresponsive to this cry is to “turn away from the very heart of God.” (Dilexi Te, 8)

In Dilexi Te 49-52, particular attention is given to the care of the sick and suffering, where Pope Leo highlights the signs present in Jesus’ public ministry such as the healing of the blind, lepers and paralytics to show how the “Church understands that caring for the sick, in whom she readily recognizes the crucified Lord, is an important part of her mission.” He further highlights that the “Christian tradition of visiting the sick, washing their wounds, and comforting the afflicted is not simply a philanthropic endeavor, but an ecclesial action through which the members of the Church ‘touch the suffering flesh of Christ.’” (DT 49)

Pope Leo draws attention to the mission of the Hospitaller Order founded by Saint John of God in the sixteenth century, which created “model hospitals that welcomed everyone, regardless of social or economic status.” (DT 50). The Holy Father points to the Camillians, who took “on the mission of serving the sick with total dedication,” noting the maternal outlook advocated by the order’s founder, Saint Camillus de Lellis , that “each person should ask the Lord for a motherly affection for their neighbor so that we may serve them with all charity, both in soul and body, because we desire, with the grace of God, to serve all the sick with the affection that a loving mother has for her only sick child.” (DT 50)

Continuing the theme of maternal affection, he notes that consecrated women have played an even greater role in providing healthcare to the poor. He names several orders and women’s congregations that “have become a maternal and discreet presence in hospitals, nursing homes and retirement homes. They have brought comfort, a listening ear, a presence, and above all, tenderness. They have built, often with their own hands, healthcare facilities in areas lacking medical assistance. They taught hygiene, assisted in childbirth and administered medicine with natural wisdom and deep faith. Their homes became oases of dignity where no one was excluded. The touch of compassion was the first medicine.” (DT 51)

Pope Leo reminds us that this legacy continues today in Catholic hospitals, healthcare facilities in remote areas, clinics operating in jungles, shelters for drug addicts and in field hospitals in war zones.

“The Christian presence among the sick reveals that salvation is not an abstract idea, but concrete action. In the act of healing a wound, the Church proclaims that the Kingdom of God begins among the most vulnerable. In doing so, she remains faithful to the One who said, ‘I was sick and you visited me’ (Mt 25:36). 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.” (DT 52)

Pope Leo heralds the work of Saint John Baptist Scalabrini and Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini in their pastoral care of migrants (DT 74) – a Church tradition that continues today as seen in initiatives such as refugee reception centers, border missions and the efforts of Caritas Internationalis and other institutions.

“Contemporary teaching clearly reaffirms this commitment,” he wrote.

In citing the Church’s mission to migrants and refugees, he quotes Pope Francis’ insistence that “our response to the challenges posed by contemporary migration can be summed up in four verbs: welcome, protect, promote and integrate.” Pope Leo then adds that “the Church, like a mother, accompanies those who are walking. Where the world sees threats, she sees children; where walls are built, she builds bridges. She knows that her proclamation of the Gospel is credible only when it is translated into gestures of closeness and welcome. And she knows that in every rejected migrant, it is Christ himself who knocks at the door of the community.” (DT 75)

In paragraphs 90-98, Dilexi Te addresses “Structures of sin that create poverty and extreme inequality.” It calls out the “dictatorship of an economy that kills” (Dilexi Te, 92) the “absolute autonomy of the marketplace” (Dilexi Te, 92) and the “empire of money.” (Dilexi Te, 81) This imbalance, in which a minority’s wealth grows while the majority is left behind, reflects what the document calls a “new tyranny”. Pope Leo XIV describes unjust structures as a “social sin” (Dilexi Te, 93) that becomes part of a “dominant mindset” (Dilexi Te, 93) where selfishness and indifference are considered normal. This leads to a form of alienation where theoretical excuses replace concrete action.

The exhortation calls for urgent commitment “to resolving the structural causes of poverty” and states that “inequality is the root of social ills.” (Dilexi Te, 94) It argues that “welfare projects, which meet certain urgent needs, should be considered merely provisional responses.” (Dilexi Te, 94) The document also connects poverty and environmental degradation: “the deterioration of the environment and of society affects the most vulnerable people on the planet”. (Dilexi Te, 96)

Referencing the Aparecida Document, Pope Leo notes “the need to consider marginalized communities as subjects capable of creating their own culture, rather than as objects of charity on the part of others” and that “such communities have the right to embrace the Gospel and to celebrate and communicate their faith in accord with the values present within their own cultures.” (DT 100) In addition, it behooves us to listen to the poor, as their experience gives them “the ability to recognize aspects of reality that others cannot see.” (DT 100)

Pope Leo adds that we are called to an attitude of “loving attentiveness” and that “true love is always contemplative, and permits us to serve the other not out of necessity or vanity, but rather because he or she is beautiful above and beyond mere appearances…” (DT 101) Furthermore, he writes, we must “let ourselves be evangelized by the poor and acknowledge ‘the mysterious wisdom which God wishes to share with us through them’(Pope Francis, 199) (Dilexi Te, 102) as “lives can actually be turned around by the realization that the poor have much to teach us about the Gospel and its demands” (DT 109).

Leo highlights the importance of work, not just as a steady source of income but for the dignity it fosters.

“On the other hand, where this is not possible, we cannot risk abandoning others to the fate of lacking the necessities for a dignified life. Consequently, almsgiving remains, for the time being, a necessary means of contact, encounter and empathy with those less fortunate,” he writes (DT 115).

In summary, Dilexi Te challenges us to reconsider how we relate to the poor and how we address them. We are called to embrace them, to personally encounter them, to learn from them, to recognize them, and ultimately to recognize Christ in them. Addressing all Christians in the closing line of this exhortation, Pope Leo XIV declares that “Through your work, your efforts to change unjust social structures or your simple, heartfelt gesture of closeness and support, the poor will come to realize that Jesus’ words are addressed personally to each of them: ‘I have loved you’”(Rev 3:9)(DT 121).

References

Dilexi Te https://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiv/en/apost_exhortations/documents/20251004-dilexi-te.html

Dilexi Te Summary, by CAPP-USA https://capp-usa.org/2025/10/dilexi-te-summary/