The apostolic exhortation Dilexi Te (“I have loved you”) is the first doctrinal document issued by Pope Leo the XIV. The letter is organized in six parts, one introduction and five chapters. This is what you need to know.
The letter was sent to all bishops around the world with a brief message:
Dear brother in Christ, It is with great joy that I write to you, following a practice begun by Pope Francis more than ten years ago, associating the entire Episcopal College at important moments of Papal Magisterium. May “Dilexi te” help the Church to serve the poor and help bring the poor to Christ.
This is what the apostolic exhortation says:
Introduction – “I Have Loved You”
Pope Leo XIV introduces Dilexi Te as a document that Pope Francis prepared during the last months of his life — one that he is making his own now — reflecting on Christ’s personal love for the poor. The letter seeks to renew the Church’s commitment to the poor as a privileged way of encountering God.
Chapter One: Some Essential Words
Using Saint Francis of Assisi as a model, the Pope insists that prioritizing the poor renews both Church and society. The poor’s cry, when not responded, exposes “moral blindness” that Catholics need to correct.
Here the letter condemns “ideological distortions,” especially “meritocratic or political ones” that blame the poor for their condition. Poverty, Pope Leo argues, is rarely chosen and cannot be justified by economic myths or social prejudice. A true Christian response demands both action and a shift of mentality.
Chapter Two: God Chooses the Poor
The exhortation makes a long Biblical argument that God chooses the poor, with quotes from both the Old and New Testaments.
Chapter Three: A Church for the Poor
The exhortation continues to make the same argument based on the Church Fathers, focusing on quoting St. John Chrysostom, St. Augustine, and St. Cyprian.
It also summarizes the long Christian tradition of concrete charity, with a long list of saints, orders and congregations serving the poor in different ways (food, education, health, etc.).
It also dedicates several paragraphs to the Church’s care for migrants from St. Frances Xavier Cabrini, patroness of immigrants, to modern refugee centers. It also makes the case for the Church’s involvement on immigration issues:
75. The Church’s tradition of working for and with migrants continues, and today this service is expressed in initiatives such as refugee reception centers, border missions and the efforts of Caritas Internationalis and other institutions. Contemporary teaching clearly reaffirms this commitment.
In this chapter the exhortation also praises “Popular Movements,” mostly with quotes from previous documents and speeches of Pope Francis.
Chapter Four: A Story That Continues
Here Pope Leo makes the case for the poor from the perspective of the Magisterium, from the first social encyclical Rerum Novarum onward, stopping significantly at the Second Vatican Council (Gaudium et Spes), the three social encyclicals of St. John Paul II, and the Magisterium of the Latin American Bishops conferences, especially highlighting the concept of the existence of “structures of sin” (social and political structures that perpetuate massive inequality and injustice).
Chapter Five: An Ongoing Challenge
The exhortation calls Catholics to get involved in serious structural reform, based on the re-reading of the parable of the Good Samaritan.True Christian life returns always to the “preferential option for the poor.”
Here the document criticizes “market economy,” as well as Catholic movements or “groups” that privilege ministering to the elites rather than the poor.
114. …Sometimes, however, pseudoscientific criteria are used to argue that the freedom of the market will spontaneously lead to a solution to the problem of poverty. Or, even, a pastoral care of the so-called elites is advocated, arguing that, rather than wasting time with the poor, it is better to care for the rich, the powerful, and the professionals, so that, through them, more effective solutions can be achieved. It’s easy to see the worldliness that lies behind these opinions: they lead us to view reality with superficial criteria, devoid of any supernatural light, favoring those who associate with us that reassure us and seeking privileges that make us comfortable.
It ends with a compelling, detailed call to Catholics to return to almsgiving as the channel “by which Christ’s words reach every heart: “I have loved you.”
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