Overview

• Leone XIV states that claiming to love God without compassion for the needy is a lie, placing the preferential option for the poor at the center of Christian faith.
• The exhortation denounces an “economy that kills,” growing inequality, financial speculation and absolute market autonomy, calling for a clear Christian witness against unjust structures.
• It identifies today’s vulnerable groups as including the sick, victims of new forms of slavery, women facing exclusion and violence, migrants and prisoners, warning that poverty also persists in wealthy societies.
• Reaffirming Catholic social teaching, the document underscores the universal destination of goods and the social function of private property.
• Copies were sent to all bishops with a fraternal letter inviting the episcopal college into this magisterial moment, as the pope also makes Pope Francis’s appeals for migrants his own.