"Dilexi Te": love that listens to the clamour of the streets

Leo XIV's exhortation and the evangelical call to recognise Christ in homeless people

"I have loved you" - "I have loved you". Pope Leo XIV opened with this declaration from the Book of Revelation (3:9) the exhortation Dilexi Tepublished on 4 October 2025. Addressed "to those who have little strength", the message seems to be written for those who live on the streets, between cold concrete and indifference.

The text is not a distant theology, but a spiritual cartography of exclusion. Leo XIV reminds us that Christ identifies himself with the poor and rejected, and that "the very ones the world despises are the ones he chooses to love first".

In the alleys of big cities, this phrase echoes with force: "You have little strength, but I loved you". It's as if it were said to every person trying to sleep amid the noise of cars, wrapped in cardboard, invisible and yet loved.

The clamour of the streets as prayer

The Pope turns to Exodus: "I have heard the cry of my people". O clamour from the streetsToday, it's a new version of this biblical cry - a wordless plea, made up of glances, outstretched hands, bodies on the margins.

Leo XIV writes: "If we remain deaf to this cry, we distance ourselves from the very heart of God." The message is direct: faith that doesn't listen to the cry of the poor is dead faith.

On the street corners, this clamour manifests itself in silence. The lady who collects cans at dawn, the young man who has lost his family ties, the old man who sleeps in front of a hospital - they are all "voices" of the same plea: "Don't let me die alone".

The God who dwells in helplessness

The text takes up the theology of the "descent of God": He doesn't come from on high to dominate, but comes down to be with those who have no place. "God became poor in order to free us from poverty," wrote Leo XIV.

Jesus was born homeless, was a migrant and died outside the city walls: experiences that echo in the stories of those who are homeless today. In quoting "the Son of Man who has nowhere to lay his head" (Mt 8:20), the Pope invites us to recognising the homeless Christ on modern pavements.

There, under an overpass, between torn blankets, could be the place where the Gospel becomes truth.

Faith that doesn't rush past

Leo XIV recalls St John Chrysostom: "There is no point in adorning the altar with gold if Christ is freezing to death at the church door." The warning has an address: the distracted hearts of the faithful, those in power and those who cross the street to avoid seeing.

The text denounces "the illusion of happiness of a comfortable life" and the "throwaway culture that tolerates millions surviving in undignified conditions". This culture, says the Pope, manifests itself not only in the economy, but also in everyday indifference The gesture of speeding up in front of someone lying on the pavement.

The exhortation proposes another path: attention span. Small gestures, a listening ear, a name spoken, a loaf of bread shared, can be, like the anointing of the woman of Bethany, acts of love that God never forgets.

A Church with bare feet

"How I wish for a Church that is poor and for the poor!" Francis repeated. Leo XIV transformed this desire into a programme of spiritual government. He evoked St Lawrence, who presented the poor as "the treasures of the Church".

This image serves as a mirror: the "treasures" of a Christian community are not in its walls, but in the lives it touches. A Church that ignores the homeless betrays its own Gospel.

The exhortation proposes a institutional and personal conversionless episodic charity and more constant presence. "It's not enough to give, you have to be together," says the text. This applies to both parishes and public policies.

Poverty as liberation

Leo XIV distinguishes between two forms of poverty: the imposedwhich hurts, and chosenthat sets you free. He recalls the monks and mendicants who "left everything to find the poor Christ".

But the exhortation warns: to romanticise poverty would be to betray the Gospel. True poverty is relational: "make yourself small in order to welcome the little one". This phrase redefines urban pastoral work: more than "helping the poor", it is share life with themrecognising his wisdom and silent faith.

Those living on the streets are not just recipients of compassion - they are also masters of resistanceThey are witnesses to a hope that survives cold and hunger.

Education, care and hospitality

Leo XIV revisits the tradition of the Church that has washed wounds, alphabetised girls and welcomed migrants. For him, caring for the poor is caring for Christ's wounded flesh.

In Brazil, this is reflected in the initiatives that emerge from the streets themselves - community newspapers, self-managed shelters, solidarity cafés. Every gesture of hospitality is a theological act: "When the Church kneels before the homeless, she rediscovers her deepest vocation," writes the Pope.

Converting your gaze: the Gospel under the viaduct

The exhortation ends with a provocation: "The Church is only fully the bride of the Lord when she is also the sister of the poor."

Being a sister of the poor today means looking at people living on the streets not as a problembut like a mirror. In them, we see what society tries to hide: the fragility we all share.

To love the poor, Leo XIV teaches, is to "participate in the very movement of God: to go down, to listen, to touch". This begins with a simple gesture - not looking away. God does the rest.

Epilogue: To love is to draw near

Between the pages of Dilexi Tean ethic of proximity emerges. The Pope asks not for pity, but for relationship. The homeless person stops being a statistic and becomes a brother again.

In times of walls and electronic gates, this exhortation sounds like a summons: tearing down fences, opening doors and sitting at the table with those left outside.

Perhaps this is the miracle that is possible in modern cities - the Gospel lived under the viaduct, among those who have little strength, but whom God continues to love.