Dilexi Te — The Hug Heard ’Round the World
One Catholic’s Response to Pope Leo XIV’s Love Letter to Poverty
1. Another Day, Another Hug
The Vatican has spoken: the solution to global poverty is more hugging.
Pope Leo XIV’s new apostolic exhortation, Dilexi Te (“I Have Loved You”), dropped on October 4, 2025, and—stop me if you’ve heard this before—it’s about the poor. Shocking, I know. Apparently, nobody in the Church hierarchy has realized that the poor are, in fact, aware they’re poor.
This latest encyclical-adjacent installment in the Church of Infinite Warmth reads like Fratelli Tutti: The Huggening. It tells us that love “breaks down every barrier” and that “the poor evangelize us.” Lovely sentiment. But you’ll forgive me for noticing that after sixty years of this “preferential option for the poor” theology, the only people who seem to be getting richer are the NGOs printing pamphlets about it.
2. The Spirit of ’65: Now with More Felt
You can almost smell the polyester vestments when you read it. Dilexi Te feels like it was written during a guitar Mass, on recycled bulletin paper, while someone waved a rainbow flag and chanted “Kumbaya, My Lord” in 6/8 time.
It’s the same post-conciliar cocktail of We Are the World theology, eco-penance, and hand-holding spirituality that’s been playing on loop since the Spirit of Vatican II first escaped its containment chamber in 1965.
Somewhere out there, a parish liturgy committee is already designing a new felt banner:
✨ “Jesus Loves the Poor — So Recycle Your Guilt!” ✨
3. Poverty Isn’t Holy—Detachment Is
Let’s review actual Church teaching for a moment, before the tambourines drown it out.
The Catechism (CCC 2429) says:
“Everyone has the right of economic initiative; everyone should make legitimate use of his talents to contribute to the abundance that will benefit all.”
Rerum Novarum (1891):
“Private ownership must be held sacred and inviolable.”
Quadragesimo Anno (1931):
“No one can be at the same time a sincere Catholic and a true Socialist.”
And Centesimus Annus (1991) added, “The free market is the most efficient instrument for utilizing resources and effectively responding to needs.”
Translation: the Church has long understood that virtue capitalism—not handouts—feeds the poor.
But Dilexi Te seems to think the answer is more “solidarity workshops” and fewer spreadsheets. Newsflash: hugging doesn’t feed people. The Saints didn’t solve famine by forming committees and writing press releases about empathy. They built monasteries, planted fields, and invented champagne.
4. Adam Smith — The Patron Saint of Common Sense
Adam Smith, the 18th-century moral philosopher (and, dare I say, honorary Thomist in a wig), nailed it: The Theory of Moral Sentiments taught that capitalism only works when it’s rooted in virtue—sympathy, prudence, temperance. The invisible hand only functions if it’s attached to an invisible heart.
In short, capitalism doesn’t need to be baptized—it just needs to go to Confession regularly.
Yet modern Catholic leaders act like economics is witchcraft. If you whisper “supply and demand” in a Vatican corridor, a Jesuit will appear behind you with a guitar and a powerpoint on “integral ecology.”
5. Virtue Capitalism: Because Jobs Beat Slogans
Let’s talk about what actually lifts people out of poverty:
Job creation, not “awareness campaigns.”
Work ethic, not “economic feelings.”
Private property, not “communal sharing spaces.”
Investment, not “intentional living circles.”
A morally ordered free market has done more to raise the poor than every diocesan Zoom call on “social justice” combined.
A Christian entrepreneur employing ten people is worth more to the poor than a hundred bishops issuing statements about “the dignity of labor” while never having hired anyone but a gardener.
6. The Church of Perpetual Empathy
The modern Church has become the world’s most expensive self-help group. We don’t preach repentance—we preach resilience. We don’t call men to holiness—we call them to “accompaniment.”
Imagine if St. Paul had written Romans in 2025:
“Brothers and sisters, be not conformed to this world, except during the Parish Justice Jam on Thursday nights.”
The problem isn’t that Dilexi Te loves the poor—it’s that it treats them like props in a cosmic Hallmark movie. The poor are not mascots for our virtue-signaling. They’re human beings who need moral formation, family stability, and honest work.
You can’t virtue-signal someone out of starvation.
7. The Theology of Productivity
Here’s a radical idea: God actually likes creation that produces things.
Genesis 2:15: “The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it.”
Note: to work it. Not “to reflect on its systemic inequities.”
Work, enterprise, craftsmanship—all these were part of God’s pre-Fall design. A moral economy built on virtue and freedom isn’t a betrayal of Christianity—it’s its practical application.
The saints didn’t despise creation; they ordered it. That’s the difference between holy poverty and ideological poverty. One says “I renounce possessions for God”; the other says “I renounce prosperity for likes.”
8. The Final Benediction (With Eye-Roll)
So yes, Your Holiness, thank you for Dilexi Te. It’s beautifully written, deeply sincere, and about as useful to solving poverty as a dreamcatcher at an economics seminar.
Maybe next time we could get an exhortation titled Dilexi Capitalem (“I Have Loved the Market”). Because Christ didn’t tell the servants to bury the talents—He told them to invest them.
The poor don’t need more felt banners. They need fathers, freedom, and functioning economies.
Until then, we’ll keep nodding respectfully at these documents, singing “Here I Am Lord,” and waiting for the day the Church rediscovers that wealth creation, not wealth guilt, is what truly loves the poor.
🕯️ Parish Bulletin Translation:
“Next week’s Mass: Jesus Was a Social Worker. Felt-banner craft session to follow in the parish hall. Bring your own glue stick and your copy of Rerum Novarum so Father can pretend he’s read it.”