By John Singarayar
Pope Leo XIV’s first major document landed in October with surprisingly sharp language. Dilexi Te, a 200-page apostolic exhortation on poverty and justice, does not read like typical Vatican fare. It reads like a challenge the Church is issuing to itself.
“We live in a throwaway culture,” the document states, describing wealthy societies that discard people “without even realizing it.” The poor are not charity cases in this framework; they are teachers who can transform how believers understand faith itself.
Authentic Christianity, it argues, is measured not by doctrine or attendance but by concrete relationships with those who struggle.
The timing amplifies the message. The Feast of Christ the King, celebrated annually in late November, was established in 1925 by Pope Pius XI amid rising fascism and nationalism. It celebrates a king who wears thorns instead of gold, who rules from a cross rather than a throne.
Both the papal document and the feast converge on an uncomfortable claim: Christ is found among the suffering, not the successful.
Matthew 25 gets cited repeatedly, the passage where Jesus identifies himself with the hungry, the sick, and the imprisoned. In this reading, ignoring poverty is not just lacking compassion. It is missing the point entirely.
The question is whether that message can break through economic realities that make a genuine encounter nearly impossible.
Catholicism in wealthy nations has largely made peace with prosperity. Economic segregation ensures that Catholics with resources rarely encounter poverty directly. Different neighborhoods, different schools, entirely separate worlds.
The bubble is not accidental; it is engineered through zoning laws, school funding mechanisms, and countless policy choices that concentrate advantage and disadvantage.
Dilexi Te names this directly. It describes what it calls “structures of sin,” language that moves beyond individual failings to systemic critique. Economic systems that hoard wealth. Policies that criminalize being poor. Cultural habits that make suffering invisible. And it insists that charity without advocacy for structural change is Christianity with its teeth pulled.
This goes further than vague calls to be nicer. The document explicitly connects personal conversion to political action. Support movements led by the poor themselves. Use institutional power for justice. Examine how your business practices and policy preferences create the conditions that require charity in the first place.
Breaking the bubble requires what Dilexi Te calls “genuine encounters,” not charity volunteering that maintains a comfortable distance, but real relationships that challenge assumptions. A wealthy parishioner who regularly shares meals with a family facing eviction, learning their names and struggles, and confronting how her own voting record contributed to their crisis. Listening more than helping. Learning more than teaching.
Pope John Paul II called this solidarity, “firm and persevering determination to commit oneself to the common good.” Not sentiment but sustained action that changes both parties.
The Feast of Christ the King sharpens this point. Pius XI responded to totalitarianism by asserting that Christ’s kingship is fundamentally different from earthly power. Not domination but service. Not coercion but invitation. A kingdom where the last are first. In practice, this means authority exists to empower others. Leadership means sacrifice. Greatness is measured by care for the weakest.
These are not metaphors. They are operational principles that, if actually implemented, would overturn most institutional hierarchies including those within the Church itself.
Which raises uncomfortable questions about credibility. Clergy abuse scandals revealed structures designed to protect power rather than vulnerable people. Vatican finances remain opaque. Bishops live comfortably while parishes close in poor neighborhoods. The gap between stated values and institutional practice creates understandable skepticism.
Dilexi Te acknowledges this. It explicitly calls the Church to accountability, arguing that credibility depends on lived witness more than correct teaching. The document quotes Pope Paul VI: “Modern man listens more willingly to witnesses than to teachers, and if he does listen to teachers, it is because they are witnesses.”
The challenge for ordinary Catholics is different but related. Many feel overwhelmed by global poverty’s scale, paralyzed by complicity in unjust systems, unsure how individual actions could possibly matter. The document’s response: start anyway. Sustained relationships, policy advocacy, institutional pressure, examined consumption, small actions create ripples.
Catholic social teaching emphasizes human dignity, solidarity, and subsidiarity, the principle that communities should control their own futures. Dilexi Te pushes these concepts beyond abstraction into specifics: housing policy, healthcare access, living wages, criminal justice reform, and climate change, as it disproportionately harms the poor.
You cannot credibly claim to be pro-life while supporting policies that immiserate actual living people.
This creates real tensions. Many Catholics vote primarily on abortion or religious liberty. The document does not contradict those concerns, but it refuses to let them overshadow economic justice. It is an uncomfortable both-and rather than a comfortable either-or.
There is calculation here, too. Catholic Church attendance is declining in wealthy nations. Younger generations increasingly view institutional religion as hypocritical, particularly around justice and inclusion. Dilexi Te effectively argues that the Church’s future depends on recovering its prophetic edge, speaking truth to power, standing with the vulnerable, and prioritizing justice over comfort.
Whether that message lands remains uncertain. The Feast of Christ the King was celebrated at the weekend in parishes worldwide. Some will have grappled with its radical implications. Many will have heard vague affirmations rather than a fundamental challenge to how power operates.
But the document plants a marker. It says clearly what Christianity actually requires when lived consistently: solidarity that costs something, encounters that change us, justice that goes beyond charity. In a society organized around consumption and self-protection, that is genuinely countercultural. Whether enough believers are willing to pay the price is the test. – UCA News
*The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official editorial position of UCA News.
