On the feast of St Francis of Assisi, Pope Leo XIV signed his first apostolic exhortation, on the topic of poverty, and held a special audience for pilgrims attending the Jubilee of Migrants and the Jubilee of the Missions. Source: CNS.
The Jubilee Year requires making a choice: serving God and justice or money and inequity, Pope Leo XIV said, marking the Jubilee of Migrants and the Jubilee of the Missions.
“We pray to be a Church that does not serve money or itself, but the kingdom of God and his justice,” he said during a special audience in St Peter’s Square on Saturday.
The Pope also signed his first apostolic exhortation, Dilexi Te (I Have Loved You), which will be released on Thursday.
The document is expected to focus on poverty and the poor.
Vatican Media footage of the Pope signing the text in the library of the Apostolic Palace showed the first page of the Table of Contents in Italian with chapters dedicated to St Francis of Assisi, “The cry of the poor”, “Ideological prejudices”, “God chooses the poor”, “Jesus, the poor Messiah”, “A church for the poor”, “The true riches of the Church” and more.
St Francis was known for his life of simplicity and poverty, seeking to imitate Christ and be detached from material possessions and earthly glory to better love and serve God.
Pope Leo continued the theme of poverty in his catechesis during Saturday’s Jubilee audience, reflecting on St Luke’s account (16:13-14) of a group of Pharisees who loved money and sneered at Jesus’s counsel to be completely dependent on God.
The Gospel passage speaks about making the choice to serve God or to serve money, Pope Leo said in English.
“When we allow material possessions to rule over us, we can fall into spiritual sadness,” he said. “When we choose God, however, we choose hope and a life of forgiveness and mercy.”
While the Holy Year dedicated to hope is a time for seeking forgiveness and mercy “so that everything can begin anew,” he said in his main address in Italian, “the Jubilee also opens up the hope of a different distribution of wealth, the possibility that the earth belongs to everyone, because this is not the case right now.”
“During this year, we must choose whom to serve, justice or injustice, God or money,” he said.
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One can’t serve God and money, Pope says on day he signs text on poverty (By Carol Glatz, CNS)
