Today, October 9, Pope Leo XIV published the first major document of his pontificate, an apostolic exhortation called Dilexi te. For those not especially familiar with the inner workings of the Catholic Church, an apostolic exhortation represents a formal exercise of the Church’s teaching authority—so what Leo has stated here enters into formal Church teaching. (You may recall how Pope Francis’ first apostolic exhortation, Evangelii Gaudium, sent shockwaves throughout the Church, owing in particular to its condemnation of an unhealthy preoccupation with niche points of doctrine at the expense of the main thrust of the Gospel.)
As the CNN article summarizes, the pope’s focus in the document is the poor, and he spends time criticizing economic inequality and the inhumane treatment of migrants. The text—which was first drafted by Francis—repeats several major themes from Francis’ pontificate, such as a condemnation of an “economy that kills,” and of a “throwaway culture.” My read is that this document clearly indicates Leo’s desire to broadly continue in the same vein as Pope Francis even if stylistically this papacy is quite distinct.
The full text of the apostolic exhortation is available here: https://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiv/en/apost_exhortations/documents/20251004-dilexi-te.html
Posted by corbinianspackanimal
4 Comments
Tradcaths when the Pope says we should try to live by the actual teachings of Jesus: 😡
> 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 to the poor be reduced to merely another ecclesial activity or function. In the words of the Aparecida Document, “we are asked to devote time to the poor, to give them loving attention, to listen to them with interest, to stand by them in difficult moments, choosing to spend hours, weeks or years of our lives with them, and striving to transform their situations, starting from them. We cannot forget that this is what Jesus himself proposed in his actions and by his words.
All the Catholics in the GOP are gonna pretend they didn’t see that
extreme levels of soyrage imbound from American right wing catholic converts, who don’t follow any of the teachings of the church.
WOPE