Misereor's Managing Director Andreas Frick comments on the first Apostolic Exhortation "Dilexi Te":
"The Apostolic Exhortation Dilexi Te published today is an urgent reminder for Misereor and the Church in Germany, but also worldwide, to step up their commitment to global solidarity and justice, especially in times of increasing conflict and crisis.
While inequality and poverty are worsening worldwide, geopolitical and economic interests are fuelling violent armed conflicts and European countries, whose prosperity has been based for centuries on the exploitation of entire continents, are closing their eyes to the misery in many regions and drawing ever higher border fences, Pope Leo XIV's first Apostolic Exhortation focuses on the biblically based call for solidarity with the poor.
Both the chosen title (Dilexi Te - I have loved you) and the date of the letter's publication on 4 October (commemoration day of St Francis of Assisi) show that Leo XIV consciously followed the political-theological line of his predecessor in terms of content. Leo XIV shows that poverty is not a fate that has fallen from the sky. It is based on structural causes, exclusion and marginalisation, which allow a few rich people to become richer and richer, while poverty and hardship increase for millions of people. The "preferential option for the poor" (7), whose magisterial character is emphasised by Leo XIV, shows the essence of the Christian message and action. Hearing the cry of the poor (8) and taking care of poverty is therefore the Gospel mandate of the Church and of all Christians. If they do not fulfil this mission decisively and actively, they undermine their own credibility as well as the socio-political power and relevance of the church.
At a time when the repeatedly proclaimed turning point is not a change in the existing unjust conditions, when the budget for humanitarian aid and development cooperation is being drastically cut in favour of a skyrocketing arms race and increasing militarisation, and when development cooperation serves at best to safeguard our own economic and security policy interests, Leo's statements sound like a warning prophetic wake-up call for "sleeping Christianity" when he writes: "If we do not want to fall out of the living stream of the Church, which springs from the Gospel and makes every moment of history fruitful, we must by no means forget the poor." (15) This does not mean paternalistic charity, but actively taking up the proposals of social movements as agents of change (81)."
