Pope links justice to poor and salvation: NZ researcher

By CathNews New Zealand

October 17th, 2025

Pope Leo XIV shares a moment with guests assisted by the Albano diocesan Caritas agency during a luncheon at the Borgo Laudato Si’ in Castel Gandolfo, Italy, in August. (CNS photo/Lola Gomez)

Pope Leo’s first apostolic exhortation shows moral attention to the poor must be reconfigured and eternal salvation is at stake, says a New Zealand researcher.

Dr Greg Marcar, a senior researcher at Te Kupenga – Nathaniel Centre for Bioethics, said that Pope Leo in Dilexi Te highlights that poverty is a multifaceted phenomenon.

Poverty can concern the lack of material means of subsistence, social marginalisation, moral, spiritual or cultural poverties.

This has important implications, Dr Marcar wrote, “not least of which is that any approach towards human poverty that only draws upon economic data as its metric will be incomplete; systems, prejudices and inequalities must also be part of the picture”.

Dilexi Te, published last week, urges resistance to a “dominant culture” that minimises, sidelines or neglects the poor as persons that should be attended to, Dr Marcar wrote. But “structures of sin” within society exist that renders it “normal to ignore the poor and live as if they do not exist”, the apostolic exhortation states.

This has long-term and possibly eternal consequences. Pope Leo drew on the writings of Church Fathers such as St John Chrysostom and St Ambrose to illustrate that attention due to the poor, “rather than a mere social requirement, is a condition for salvation”.

For instance, St John Chrysostom cautions that “not giving to the poor is stealing from them, defrauding them of their lives, because what we have belongs to them”.

Pope Leo (following the Church Fathers’ lead) affirms that all of creation is given by the Creator for the needs of his creatures. The failure of those who are “rich” to attend to the needs of the poor is therefore tantamount to a form of theft.

“By reminding us of this reality, Dilexi Te powerfully underscores the need for us to reconfigure our moral attention towards the poor with a warning that not paying such attention may come at a heavy price,” Dr Marcar wrote.

Dilexi Te (I Have Loved You) was signed by Pope Leo on October 4, the feast of St Francis of Assisi, and released on October 9, the feast of St John Henry Newman.

FULL STORY

Dilexi Te and our Need to Pay Attention to the Poor (By Dr Greg Marcar/Te Kupenga – Nathaniel Centre for Bioethics)