Pope Leo XIV has delivered a stark condemnation of the wealthy elite, accusing them of living in a “bubble of comfort and luxury” while the poor suffer on the margins. His first teaching document, released Thursday, confirms his perfect alignment with predecessor Pope Francis on social and economic injustice.
The Vatican unveiled the 100-page document, “I have loved you,” which Pope Francis had begun writing in his final months but never finished. Pope Leo, elected in May, credited Pope Francis with the text, citing him repeatedly, but made it his own and signed it.
The text traces Christianity’s constant concern for the poor, from Biblical citations and church fathers to recent popes’ teachings on migrants, prisoners, and human trafficking victims. Leo praised women’s religious orders for carrying out God’s mandate to care for the sick, feed the poor, and welcome strangers, and lauded lay-led movements advocating for land, housing, and work for the disadvantaged.
Pope Leo concludes that the Catholic Church’s “preferential option for the poor” has existed from the start, is non-negotiable, and is the very essence of being Christian. He calls for renewed commitment to fixing poverty’s structural causes, while providing unquestioning charity to those in need.
“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,” Leo writes.
Citing Francis, a critique of the wealthy
Pope Leo cites Pope Francis frequently, including in some of the Argentine pope’s most-quoted talking points about the global “economy that kills” and criticism of trickle down economics. Pope Francis made those points from the very start of his pontificate in 2013, saying he wanted a “church that is poor and for the poor.”
“God has a special place in his heart for those who are discriminated against and oppressed, and he asks us, his church, to make a decisive and radical choice in favour of the weakest,” Pope Leo writes.
Echoing Pope Francis, Pope Leo rails against the “illusion of happiness” derived from accumulating wealth. “Thus, in a world where the poor are increasingly numerous, we paradoxically see the growth of a wealthy elite, living in a bubble of comfort and luxury, almost in another world compared to ordinary people.”
Pope Francis’ frequent criticism of capitalism angered many conservative and wealthy Catholics, especially in the United States, who accused the Argentine Jesuit of being a Marxist.
In a recent interview, Pope Leo said such misdirected criticism cannot be levelled against him. “The fact that I am American means, among other things, people can’t say, like they did about Pope Francis, ‘he doesn’t understand the United States, he just doesn’t see what’s going on,’” Pope Leo told Crux, a Catholic site.
As a result, Pope Leo’s embrace of Francis’ teaching on poverty and the church’s obligation to care for the weakest is a significant reaffirmation, especially in Pope Leo’s first teaching document.
Signed on the feast of St. Francis
Pope Leo signed the text on Oct. 4, the feast of St. Francis of Assisi, the 13th-century mendicant friar who renounced his wealth to live poor among the poor. The date was not coincidental.
The late Pope Francis named himself after the saint and one of the pontiff’s most important documents “Fratelli Tutti” (Brothers All) was itself published on the Oct. 4 feast day in 2020.
Pope Leo, too, seems inspired by the saint’s example: As a young priest, the former Robert Prevost left the comforts of home to work as a missionary in Peru as a member of the Augustinian religious order, one of the other ancient mendicant orders that considers community, the sharing of communal property and service to others as central tenets of its spirituality.
“The fact that some dismiss or ridicule charitable works, as if they were an obsession on the part of a few and not the burning heart of the church’s mission, convinces me of the need to go back and reread the Gospel, lest we risk replacing it with the wisdom of this world,” Pope Leo writes.
A reference to Liberation Theology
Pope Leo’s emphasis on the church’s age-old “preferential option for the poor,” is unusual given the Vatican’s troubled history in dealing with liberation theology, the Latin American-inspired Catholic theology that had the “preferential option for the poor” as its mantra.
The Vatican under St. John Paul II spent much effort battling liberation theology and disciplining some of its most famous defenders, arguing that they had misinterpreted Jesus’ preference for the poor as a Marxist call for armed rebellion.
Pope Leo, in contrast, doubled down on the concept, citing several of the Latin American church’s fundamental documents on the issue. He praised as an inspiration St. Oscar Romero, the Salvadoran archbishop who was killed in 1980 by right-wing death squads opposed to his preaching against the repression of the poor by the army.
Pope Leo’s text minimised the dispute over liberation theology by saying the Vatican’s 1984 crackdown on its promoters was “not initially well received by everyone.”
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