After Blasting Musk’s Fortune, Pope Leo Will Target Inequality in First Major Document
His debut text will tackle economic justice — and put the poor at the center of the Church’s mission.
Pope Leo XIV’s first major teaching text is expected to focus squarely on economic justice and the needs of the poor.
Reuters reports that the document — an apostolic exhortation — could carry the working title “Dilexit te” (“He loved you”) and is slated for release in the coming weeks, signaling continuity with the late Pope Francis's anti-poverty priorities.
The timing tracks with Leo’s early public messaging.
In excerpts of his first media interview released this weekend, the pope criticized outsized executive compensation packages, citing Tesla’s proposed pay plan for CEO Elon Musk as an example of a culture that rewards wealth concentration over fairness.
“If [money] is the only thing that has value anymore, then we’re in big trouble,” Pope Leo said.
Details of the exhortation remain under wraps. According to Reuters’ sourcing, the text will emphasize the Church’s duty to the vulnerable and is being framed as Leo’s first high-level statement of priorities since his May election. No publication date has been announced.
Apostolic exhortations do not define doctrine, but recent popes have used them to set agendas and synthesize pastoral priorities.
Read in tandem with Leo’s interview comments on wages and inequality, the forthcoming document appears likely to place questions of work, debt, housing, and social safety nets at the center of his early pontificate.
Any specific policy references — or lack thereof — will signal how directly Leo intends to engage global economic debates from the outset.
What’s next: watch for Vatican confirmation of the title and release date, as well as whether Leo includes concrete examples of harmful economic practices and how he links economic justice to other issues he has highlighted, such as polarization and peace.
For now, this much is clear: the first American-born pope is preparing to make care for the poor the headline of his opening act — and he is already pressing the moral stakes of runaway inequality in his own words.
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Somebody should tell his holiness that the good Samaritan could not have helped the injured and bloody victim on the road if he didn’t have sufficient money. This idea of enforcing income equality is garbage. Besides, what is the Catholic Church doing with its billions in stocks, bonds, certificates, and other financial vehicles? Are they using any of them to help persecuted Catholics in China or the Middle East? Of course not! That’s because the Catholic Church is interested far more in geopolitics than in God.
This condemnation of excessive wealth is nothing but Catholic guilt on steroids. Church leadership exploits the immigrants, the poor, the unborn (but they stopped doing that) not because it cares about morality but to intimidate people and to enrich itself.