New Pope Leo XIV urges compassion for immigrants and poor in 1st papal exhortation

In his first major document as pope, Dilexi Te (I Have Loved You), Pope Leo XIV called on the world to confront inequality and embrace those “who have but little power.”

Released last week, the 121-paragraph apostolic exhortation continues the late Pope Francis’ unfinished reflections on social justice and human dignity. Leo condemns systems that “discard others without even realizing it” and urges Catholics and world leaders alike to reject economic and political models that treat the poor and migrants as expendable.

The document, signed Oct. 4 on the feast of St. Francis of Assisi, centers on what Leo describes as “a love that listens to the cry of the poor.” He writes, “The poor are not there by chance or by blind and cruel fate,” stressing that poverty is created and sustained by human choices. Leo denounces the misuse of “pseudo-scientific data” to justify economic inequality and warns that widespread indifference has become “a social pathology.” In a section on migration, he states that “the Church, like a mother, accompanies those who are walking,” and insists that where the world builds walls, the Church must build bridges.

Leo’s exhortation continues Francis’ advocacy for migrants and the poor but introduces new urgency in tone and scope. The text identifies economic exclusion, forced migration, and social isolation as signs of “a world losing its moral bearings.” Conservative Catholic commentators criticized “Dilexi Te” for echoing Pope Francis’ social agenda, arguing that Pope Leo XIV’s focus on migrants and the poor risks politicizing the Church and blurring distinctions between legal and illegal immigration.