According to Scott Appleby, the Keough-Hesburgh Professor of Global Affairs at Notre Dame’s , “Dilexi Te” is a “radical document” that conveys a tone of urgency by Pope Leo that is striking and worth noting.
“‘Dilexi Te’ is radical in that it goes to the very roots of Christian teaching,” Appleby said, “that compassion for and solidarity with the poor is the most direct path to communion with Jesus Christ, who ‘identified himself with the lowest ranks of society’ and thereby ‘confirm[ed] the dignity of every human being.’”
Pope Leo describes “the many faces of the poor and of poverty” to include “the poverty of those who lack material means of subsistence, the poverty of those who are socially marginalized and lack the means to give voice to their dignity and abilities, moral and spiritual poverty, cultural poverty, the poverty of those who find themselves in a condition of personal or social weakness or fragility, the poverty of those who have no rights, no space, no freedom.”
Poverty affects all those around it and in different ways, Appleby noted. “The so-called rich can themselves suffer from the soul-crushing indifference — or even open hostility toward — the rapidly growing local, national and global population of weak, vulnerable, economically and socially marginalized people, displaced by policies and ‘criteria for orienting life and politics that are marked by numerous inequalities,’” he said.
Appleby said the pope’s words take on a “striking tone of urgency” when he recounts society’s alarming obsession with what Leo calls “the accumulation of wealth and social success at all costs, even at the expense of others.”
“This culture of hostility to the poor ‘discards others without even realizing it and tolerates with indifference that millions of people die of hunger or survive in conditions unfit for human beings,’” Appleby said, paraphrasing the apostolic exhortation.
Appleby noted that Pope Leo underscores the plight of women in his teaching as those who are “doubly poor,” reflecting that the Church often says one thing but does another when it comes to women. “Societies worldwide are still far from reflecting clearly that women possess the same dignity and identical rights as men, the pope teaches,” Appleby said.
Appleby added that the pope’s words indicate a longing for looking beyond numbers and data to see the reality of poverty’s true effects on human development throughout the world, and finding ways to heal the problems at their deepest roots.
“There is no shortage of theories attempting to justify the present state of affairs or to explain that economic thinking requires us to wait for invisible market forces to resolve everything,” Appleby said.
“Nevertheless, urges the pope, ‘the dignity of every human person must be respected today, not tomorrow, and the extreme poverty of all those to whom this dignity is denied should constantly weigh upon our consciences.’”