At 12 noon today a press conference was held at the Holy See Press Office, Via della Conciliazione 54, to present the Apostolic Exhortation “Dilexi te” of the Holy Father Leo XIV on love for the poor.

The speakers were: His Eminence Cardinal Michael Czerny, S.J., prefect of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development; His Eminence Cardinal Konrad Krajewski, prefect of the Dicastery for the Service of Charity; Fr. Frédéric-Marie Le Méhauté, provincial of the Friars Minor of France/Belgium, doctor in theology; and p.s. Clémence, Little Sister of Jesus of the Fraternity of Tre Fontane.

The following are some of their interventions:

Intervention of His Eminence Cardinal Michael Czerny, S.J.

1.The face of the poor as an epiphany of the Kingdom of God (8-12)

In the healing of wounds, whether physical, social or spiritual, the Church proclaims that the Kingdom of God embraces the vulnerable. In every act of care such as visiting the sick (Mt 25:36), the Christian community experiencessalvation as a concrete relationshipwith those who bear the marks of the Cross in their flesh.

Poverty, a huge social problem, is also atheologicaltheme: through the poor, God speaks to the Church (“Dilexi te,I have loved you” [1]), faith becomes real in mercy and service that break down barriers, and God’s people experience the beatitude of “the poor in spirit.”[2]

2.From structures of sin to the conversion of social structures (90-98)

Recent Church teaching understands thatpoverty results from structures of sin.Selfishness and indifference solidify in economic and cultural systems. The “economy that kills”[3]measures human value in terms of productivity, consumption and profit. This “dominant mentality” makes it acceptable to discard the weak and unproductive, and thus deserves the label “social sin”.

Beyond donations and other assistance, the Church's response denounces the false impartiality of the market, proposes models of development, promotes justice, aims for theconversion of structures. This fosters a form of communal orsocial repentancethat restores dignity to the invisible and helps them to develop more fully.

3.Poverty as active subjectivity and principle of evangelisation (99-102)

St John Paul II urged the poor tobecome protagonists of ecclesial and social transformation.Popular movements (80-81)with their “moral energy,”[4]demonstrate that justice arises from including the excluded. Besides suffering privation, the poor can be “bearers of hope” and “builders of a common destiny.”[5]Let the Church assist them,be evangelised by them, recognise the Spirit at work in them, and together proclaim the Gospel.

4.Education, Eucharist and Service: promoting integral development (68-72, 108-114)

Promoting integral human development, according to the Social Teaching of the Church, intertwineseducation, Eucharist and service.

•Educationis the first act of justice, because it frees people from spiritual poverty and prepares them for social responsibility.

•The Eucharistbrings diverse people together,nourishes the community and missions ittocharity and solidarity.

•Serviceissocial love in concrete form: care for the poor and for our common home.

Thus, the Church offers mercy to the world, promoting a civilisation in which every person is recognised as the image of God.

5.Charity generates peace and universal fraternity (108-114)

InDilexi te,Pope Leo joins Pope Francis in declaring: there will beno peace as long as the poor and the planet are neglected and abused.

Christian peace isreconciling and reconciled justice. The poor, Mother Teresa said, “do not need our pity but our respectful love.”[6]Treating them with dignity is the first act of peace. Only a society with the discarded at its centre can be truly peaceful, and only a world of such societies can be at peace.

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[1]Addressed to Philadelphia, a poor and powerless Christian community, unimportant but faithful, treated instead with violence and contempt: “You have but little power… and they will realize that I have loved you” (Revelation 3:8-9).

[2]Matthew 5:3.

[3]Evangelii Gaudium, 92-93.

[4]PopeFrancis,Adress to the Participants in the World Meeting of Popular Movements, 28 October 2014.

[5]PopeFrancis,Adress to the Participants in the World Meeting of Popular Movements, 28 October 2014.

[6]Dilexi te,77.

Intervention of Fr. Frédéric-Marie Le Méhauté

Taking Seriously the Love of Christ…from the last

The point of departure of Dilexi te is the love of God for a weak community, “exposed to violence and contempt” (1). The pope recalls that beyond definitions of poverty, “the poor are not so by chance nor by reason of a blind and bitter destiny” (14). There are “sinful structures that create extreme poverty and inequalities” (90-98). Our attention should go to these “weakest, most miserable and most suffering” persons (2) and in particular to women, sometimes “doubly poor” (12). It is not only a matter of combatting the structural causes of poverty, but also of concretely joining those who are often far from our attention, to live “with them and like them” (101).

We must be realistic: “We feel more at ease without the poor” (114). They upset our habits; they make us face human limits that we prefer to ignore. The pope invites us to change our gaze. The poor are not only a problem. They “are a family matter”; they are “ours” (104), “brothers and sisters to welcome” (56) because God himself chose them first. “It is to them that the word of hope and liberation of the Lord is first addressed” (21). This privileged choice of God can make us feel uneasy. We would prefer an impartial God. Certainly, salvation is for everyone. But it does not come to us outside of concrete relationships (52). Where our mundane logic constructs the world from the point of view of the strong and rejects those who cannot participate, the logic of God starts with the excluded with the “stone rejected” (Ps 117:22) to make his Kingdom come.

Engagement with the poor is, therefore, not only a consequence of our faith. It is an epiphany, “an almost liturgical act” (61) because “one cannot separate the worship of God from attention to the poor” (40). “In this appeal to recognize him in the poor and the suffering, is revealed the heart of Christ himself” (3). “The love of the poor (…) is the evangelical guarantee of a Church faithful to the heart of God” (103) and a community that tries “to stay tranquil without trying in a creative way to assist” the poor is destined to lose its evangelical vigor (113),

Dilexi te recalls the need to engage for the poor, to give to the poor, in particular through almsgiving (115-119). But it insists that we learn to act with them. The acceleration of contemporary problems “is not only to be endured but also confronted and analyzed by the poor” (82). This theme must be insisted on: the poor have a thought. That is, they can be actors and not only “objects of our compassion” (79) or of our politics, that they can help us analyze problems and especially that they are carriers of true solutions. Understanding this from their point of view is essential because “reality is better seen from the margins and [that] the poor are given a particular intelligence, indispensable to the Church and humanity” (82). Learning this permits us to better perceive the worldly logic at work in society, in the Church. It is from this understanding that Dilexi te denounces a politics and an economy dominated by a “happy minority” (92) that monopolizes riches and imposes “sacrifices on people to achieve certain objectives that concern the powerful” (93).

In summary, Dilexi te articulates a theology of revelation that gushes out mercy towards the most poor, an ecclesiology of service as a criterion of truth, and a social ethic that joins a hand stretched out to fight for justice. The last words are programmatic for a Church “that puts no limits on love, that knows no enemies to fight but only men and women to love” (120). Each person in difficulty should be able to hear individually “I have loved you.” This is the promise and our compass to follow and “imitating the poor Christ, naked and despised” (64) to construct a society and a Church where “no one should feel abandoned any more” (21).

Fr. Frédéric-Marie Le Méhauté

Intervention of p.s. Clémence

I would prefer that on this occasion Lacri, Pana or another of the Roma women with whom we shared our life on an empty field in the south of Italy for several years would be seated in my place. These women who as we recalling in the Exhortation, due to their situation of exclusion, are “doubly poor” but in whom “we find […] the most admirable gestures of daily heroism in the protection and in the care of the fragility of their families.” (1)The memory of Ancuza, entering into our hut, her discreet smile on her lips and a big piece of bread that was still warm in her hands, is still alive in me. Seeing us, she broke the bread in two and gave us half,saying to us “for your meal this evening.” Astonished witnesses of their offering, we were touched by the attention that they gave us when we knew of the difficulties they had earning their living. Even though materially poor, they are rich in humanity!

Many of them have not studied, but they possess inside them this wisdom that is formed through the experience of fragility that leads to sharing and solidarity. The Holy Father invites us to recognize the “mysterious wisdom that God wants to communicate to us through them.” (2) By their example, we rediscover solidarity because, careful to reserve our riches, we have often tend to forget it.

“I have loved you”: Luminiza has lived this phrase on the inside, experienced at the deepest part of her heart. I see us still seated on the side of the bed in the small but clean hut, and that she told us: “I was the lost sheep, undisciplined, and He, the Lord, he came to find me, he took me on his shoulders, like that and he traveled with me.” That day, I admired, but I also envied her faith! I saw clearly that her relationship with the Lord was much simpler, more direct, more concrete than mine. That is why I see my elf in this phrase ofDilexi te: “It is a surprising experience […] and becomes a veritable turning point in our personal life, when we realize that it is precisely the poor who evangelize us.” (3)

I cannot pass over in silence the moment in June 2014 when an accidental fire burned half the huts of the field. The little that we had, along with about sixty other families, was entirely consumed in several minutes. No more shelter, no more housing, clothes, or places to prepare food…Everything had to start anew. And yet, on that day, I never heard a single complaint among our friends and neighbors, only a litany of praise: “thanks to God, we are all alive!”, “God has accompanied us this far, he will not abandon us,Tomorrow, we will set out again with the help of God.” It is through them that I discovered this capacity to center myself on the essential: life, the present moment, with confident abandonment to Providence. In this, they continue to be my “spiritual teachers.” (4)

Thanks be to Pope Leo for the message that he has offered us today, this call to be “a Church that is poor and for the poor,”(5) but especially “with the poor.” (6) This apostolic exhortation allowed me to revisit all those years lived among my Roma friends and to discover how what we had lived together was for me on the order of a sacrament, as is emphasized in the text: “the poor person is not only someone to help, but the sacramental presence of the Lord.” (7)

Together with them, as the Holy Father invites us, let us set about to bring about this “new civilization where the poor [are not] problems to resolve, but brothers and sisters to welcome” (8) because we have all been loved.

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1.Dilexi te. P, 4 (n. 12) Citation of the Apostolic Letter Fratelli tutti (3 October 2020), 23:AAS112 (2020, 977

2.Dilexi te P. 37( n. 102)

3.Dilexi te P. 41 (n. 109)

4.Dilexi te P. 22 (n. 63)

5.Dilexi te P. 13 (n. 35)

6.Dilexi te P. 39 (n. 103)

7.Dilexi te P.16 (n. 44)

8.Dilexi te P. 19 (n. 56)