Leo XIV pointed out that poverty takes different forms—material, spiritual and moral—and assured that they all share a transversal element: loneliness.
Pope Leo XIV lamented this Sunday the multiple forms of poverty that “oppress the world” and sent a direct message to rulers, whom he urged to assume their responsibility in the face of global inequality. The pontiff presided over the Jubilee of the Poor Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica, before thousands of people.
“Poverty challenges Christians, but also those who have responsible roles in society. I urge the heads of state to listen to the cry of the poorest,” he declared during his homily. Leo XIV, the first American pope in history, insisted that “there can be no peace without justice,” one of the axes of his apostolic exhortation Dilexi te (2025), focused on the dignity of the excluded.
A mass that overflowed the basilica
The influx was such that, according to Vatican News, some 12,000 people had to follow the ceremony from Vatican Square, where the Pope came out to greet them. “The basilica has become a little too small for us,” he said, before an audience mostly made up of migrants, homeless people and beneficiaries of humanitarian programs.
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Leo XIV pointed out that poverty takes different forms—material, spiritual and moral—and assured that they all share a transversal element: loneliness. He denounced that the poor are silenced “by the myth of well-being and progress,” which systematically excludes those who are left out.
The pontiff warned about the “globalization of helplessness,” an idea that, he stated, promotes the false notion that the world cannot change in the face of injustices such as wars or social abandonment. Faced with this, he asked to build a “culture of attention” that breaks the “wall of loneliness.”
“We must be attentive to the other, where we are: in the family, at work, in the digital world, and also in the peripheries,” he expressed, emphasizing that human coexistence must be a space of dignity “without excluding anyone.”
*Journalism in Venezuela is carried out in a hostile environment for the press with dozens of legal instruments in place to punish the word, especially the laws “against hate”, “against fascism” and “against the blockade.” This content was written taking into consideration the threats and limits that, consequently, have been imposed on the dissemination of information from within the country.
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