Pope Leo XIV focuses on the poor and marginalized in first major document

The first major document issued by the first American pope was welcomed by some Catholics on Long Island on Thursday as what they saw as a continuation of the direction Pope Francis was taking the church in, with a focus on the poor and marginalized.

Leo XIV, who was born in Chicago, called for compassion for those on the margins, including migrants, questioned a global market "dictatorship of an economy that kills" as it fuels rising inequality, and issued a call to combat human trafficking, slavery and other ills.

But the central focus of the document is poverty, including repeated references to the church’s "preferential option for the poor" — a reminder of his 20 years as a missionary in South America when that was a rallying cry of an emerging Catholic movement called "Liberation Theology."

Richard Costa, a West Sayville resident and a chaplain at a Catholic high school in Queens, said the pope’s message was "invigorating."

"It just reaffirms our mission," he said. "To know Christ and to know ourselves we have to go out to those on the margins. It's not something that we have the choice to do, but rather a Christian obligation."

Frank McQuade, a former priest who is now an attorney in Long Beach, said he found Leo’s message and style inviting.

"I read Leo’s letter as more of a velvet touch that engages me rather than accusing us," McQuade said. "For me it is a personal call, not a we-they challenge ... not accusatory history and not a corporate credo. It reminds me that the poor are one of us, our neighbors, ourselves. It’s an invite to look into the face and eyes of the poor."

Causes of poverty

In the 104-page apostolic exhortation, issued in Rome on Thursday, Leo proposes not just almsgiving but questioning the structural causes of poverty.

The number of people living in poverty "should constantly weigh upon our consciences," he wrote.

"There is no shortage of theories attempting to justify the present state of affairs or to explain that economic thinking requires us to wait for invisible market forces to resolve everything," he said.

"The poor are promised only a few 'drops' that trickle down, until the next global crisis brings things back to where they were."

He also addresses other types of poverty, including spiritual, educational and social.

The document, titled Dilexi te (I have loved you), was started as a writing project by Pope Francis. He was unable to finish it before he died in April. Leo completed it, though he wrote at the beginning of the text that "I am happy to make this document my own — adding some reflections — and to issue it at the beginning of my own pontificate."

Costa said he found Leo’s message "very much in the footsteps of Francis."

"Leo’s experience living with those who are poor in Peru maybe takes this document a bit further than Francis would have. Which is saying a lot. Leo lived on ‘the margins’ and that comes through in his writing."

Served as missionary

Before he became pope in May, Leo spent a total of 20 years in various stints in Peru as a missionary with the Augustinian order. Starting in 1985 and ending in 2023, he served in posts ranging from parish priest to bishop, and even became a naturalized Peruvian citizen. 

Richard Koubek, a former public policy education network administrator at Catholic Charities on Long Island, said he thought Leo’s comments on the preferential option for the poor and migrants would be a boost to people opposing President Donald Trump’s initiatives on immigration and diversity, equity and inclusion, among other issues.

"It’s going to generate excitement and energy on the part of Catholics who are very upset at the Trump administration’s immigration policies, its cuts to Medicaid," food stamps and other anti-poverty programs, he said.

American Catholics who were wondering what stance Leo would take after the papacy of Francis, who clearly backed the option for the poor, "now know where he landed."

Rick Hinshaw, a former editor of The Long Island Catholic, the official newspaper of the Diocese of Rockville Centre, said Leo’s messages partly made him think of Dorothy Day, the founder of the Catholic Worker movement, who believed in social change and helping those in need who were right in front of you.

"I'm reminded of how Dorothy Day emphasized that Catholic social teaching doesn't begin with a political agenda" but to "reaching out to those around us in need" and not just material needs, he said.

"I didn't get a real sense in this of a real polarizing, taking sides on the liberal-conservative divisions," he said.

Leo has been more reserved so far than Francis, but he appeared to take on Trump in some passages.

"The Church, like a mother, accompanies those who are walking," Leo wrote. "She knows that in every rejected migrant, it is Christ himself who knocks at the door of the community."

"Where the world sees threats, [the Church] sees children; where walls are built, she builds bridges," he wrote.