10 inspiring phrases from Pope Leo XIV in the apostolic exhortation “Dilexi te”

This October 9, the first apostolic exhortation of Pope Leo XIV entitled I love youabout Christ’s command to love the poor and which was born from a project started by his predecessor, Pope Francis.

In that sense, we present below some of the most inspiring phrases from Leo XIV’s first pontifical document:

1. I consider it necessary to insist on this path of sanctification, because in the “call to recognize it in the poor and suffering, the very heart of Christ is revealed, his deepest feelings and options, with which every saint tries to configure himself.”

2. There still persists—sometimes well hidden—a culture that excludes others without even noticing it, and tolerates with indifference that millions of people die of hunger or live in conditions unworthy of human beings.

3. The fact that the exercise of charity is despised or ridiculed, as if it were the fixation of some and not the incandescent core of the ecclesial mission, makes me think that it is always necessary to reread the Gospel, so as not to run the risk of replacing it with a worldly mentality.

4. It is undeniable that the primacy of God in the teaching of Jesus is accompanied by another fixed point: one cannot love God without extending one’s own love to the poor. Love of neighbor represents tangible proof of the authenticity of love for God.

5. When the Church kneels to break the new chains that imprison the poor, it becomes a sign of Easter.

6. The mendicants have become a sign of a pilgrim, humble and fraternal Church, which lives among the poor not by proselytizing strategy, but by identity. They teach that the Church is light only when it is stripped of everything, and that holiness comes through a humble heart dedicated to the little ones.

7. Either we regain our moral and spiritual dignity, or we fall as if into a pit of filth.

8. The Christian cannot consider the poor only as a social problem; These are a “family matter”, they are “ours”. Our relationship with them cannot be reduced to an activity or an office of the Church.

9. Love is above all a way of conceiving life, a way of living it. Well, a Church that sets no limits to love, that knows no enemies to fight, but only men and women to love, is the Church that the world needs today.

10. Remaining in the world of ideas and discussions, without personal, assiduous and sincere gestures, would be the downfall of our most precious dreams. For this simple reason, as Christians, we do not renounce alms.