Gaetano Masciullo's text presents a critical analysis of a fictional Apostolic Exhortation titled Dilexi Te ("I have loved you"), supposedly released by a future and equally fictional Pope Leo XIV. According to the author, this document, centered on love and care for the poor, is actually a text drafted during the final days of Pope Francis's pontificate, representing the logical continuation of his ecclesial vision. Masciullo's critique focuses not on the socio-political dimension of the document, but on its problematic theological-moral framework, which, he argues, distorts traditional Catholic teaching on poverty.
📜 Origin and Influence: The Legacy of Pope Francis and the Theology of the People
The author establishes from the outset that Pope Leo XIV, in his fictional work, is a direct heir to Pope Francis's ecclesial vision: a "synodal, decentralized, and collegial" Church. The text Dilexi Te is presented as a natural continuation of this line of thought, rooted in the "theology of the people" (or teologia del pueblo), an Argentine theological current that emerged after the Second Vatican Council as an autonomous offshoot of Liberation Theology. Masciullo asserts that Pope Francis was "steeped to the core" in this theology, and the fictional exhortation reflects its fundamental premises. Although Pope Leo XIV does not share Francis's "impulsive" and "authoritarian" style, he adopts the same flawed theological structure.
⚠️ The Central Error: A Secularized View of Poverty
The main flaw of Dilexi Te, according to the analysis, is its inability to answer the essential question: why does the Church care for the poor and, more importantly, what is the theological meaning of the phenomenon of poverty? The document claims that the Church recognizes the face of Christ in the poor, but it does not explain why. The justification provided – that the Church seeks to alleviate human suffering – does not differentiate it from secular organizations, such as the UN, whose goal is to "eradicate poverty." With this, the author questions, the Church positions itself as "ancillary to this worldly discourse" instead of offering a distinct perspective. The text fails to distinguish whether the Church loves poverty itself or the poor, and whether poverty is intrinsically a good.
🕊️ Spiritual Poverty: The Ignored Root Cause
The author points out that although the fictional exhortation mentions various forms of poverty (material, social, moral, cultural, and spiritual), it completely neglects to delve into spiritual poverty. For Masciullo, this is the most severe form of poverty and the "true root cause of material poverty." The analyzed text makes the mistake of confusing it with moral poverty (an inability to discern good), when, in fact, spiritual poverty consists of sin and vice, that is, the "absence of God's grace in the life of the human person." The author notes that in the fictional document, the word "sin" appears only a few times, and the word "vice" does not appear at all. Likewise, intellectual poverty (ignorance) is ignored, this also being a consequence of spiritual poverty.
🚩 Marxist Diagnosis and Socialist Solution
Masciullo's analysis is blunt in stating that, stripped of its Christian language, the exhortation Dilexi Te resembles a "worrying Marxist manifesto." The fictional document's diagnosis is that the poor exist because certain individuals accumulate wealth excessively. The proposed solution, therefore, would be the intervention of the state or international bodies to control private actors and redistribute resources (money, houses, land) in an egalitarian manner. The author vehemently rejects this premise, contrasting it with traditional Catholic doctrine, which teaches that the root of all evil is sin, which generates "spiritual poverty."
👑 The Response of Traditional Doctrine: Divine Grace and the Social Reign of Christ
In opposition to the view presented in Dilexi Te, the author turns to Catholic doctrine to affirm that it is not wealth, but the absence of grace that causes imbalance in the world. The solution is not socialism, but the "Social Reign of Christ." Citing St. Thomas Aquinas, he explains that wealth is not an evil in itself, but an instrument that can be used for good. The assertion that one person's wealth is the primary cause of another's poverty is, for the author, "a highly dangerous statement" that can be co-opted by socialism.
The text concludes by recalling that the evangelical poverty lived by Christ was not material misery, but "poverty of spirit" – the inner detachment from greed and material goods, necessary for the faithful to be filled with the gifts of the Holy Spirit. Christ himself, the author points out, had wealthy friends like Zacchaeus, Lazarus, and Joseph of Arimathea, who placed their goods at the service of God, showing that the conversion of the heart, not forced state intervention, is the way. The final idea, which synthesizes the entire critique, is that "it is neither wealth nor poverty that saves the world, but the grace of God." Without grace, both wealth and poverty itself risk becoming a form of idolatry, a phenomenon that, according to the author, is already being observed within the Catholic Church today.
