A “widespread” social injustice that “springs from arrogant corruption, as deplorable as it is discriminatory”. Pope Leo, in the message ”The Lord is the refuge of the poor”, released for the X World Day of the Poor which will be celebrated on Sunday 15 November 2026, it speaks of a society where the transcendent is no longer sought, but only personal interest.
«The first to have to suffer the consequences are the poor, who are not surprisingly on the increase in many societies. The absence of God places people no longer next to each other in mutual respect, but one above the other in the sign of domination and oppression. A desecrating logic of abuse and waste that marginalizes and humiliates is thus exhibited. In this condition they find themselves not just individual people, but entire populations. The words of the Psalm still resonate full of truth: “They devour my people like bread”. Furthermore, adds the Pontiff, “the cry of justice of the poor today is extinguished with multiple techniques, increasingly subtle, to the point of rendering their every effort to make their requests heard”.
The Pope underlines that «the digital environment radicalizes prejudice towards them and increases the curtain of indifference that surrounds their causes. All the poor have left is cry out to God and make the complaint reach himor, having the certainty of being heard because God is faithful and rich in mercy.”
In a society that ignores them «those who are oppressed, humiliated and defenseless grow in the certainty of having to abandon themselves to God full of trust and expectation. In this total trust, the sense of one’s dignity flourishes again, one recognizes sisters and brothers with whom to organize one’s dreams, hope silently becomes reality. Taking refuge in God is equivalent to finding true and safe protection, the one that the powerful cannot guarantee and prefer to deny».
But if the poor are discarded, «the Christian community», insists Leone, «cannot remain insensitive to the many who today are at the door and remain invisible to those who are closed within their own walls. The Church, by its very nature, she is called to be poor and a refuge for the poor”. In line with the Gospel and recalling Saint Augustine and the parable of the rich man, as well as the gesture of Saint Francis who, upon arriving in Rome, “took off his own clothes and exchanged them for the tattered clothes of one of them”, the Church is called to a profound conversion.
Furthermore, those who are vulnerable «know how to recognize the essential more than others, because they live from the essential. More similar than anyone to Christ, he recognizes God as his refuge even when circumstances seem to deny itand is full of hope for his justice, which is not slow in manifesting itself.” The Pope underlines that “Whoever has God as a refuge is free to make prophetic choices.” The Message then insists on the need for the distances between those who are assisted and those who assist to be overcome because each is a gift for the other and because the poor “live in the shelter of the Most High”.
And then, «for those who are deprived of a home, a job, education, food, health, a new path opens up: sharing as an expression of the Kingdom of God. Atobsession of those who accumulate wealth only for himself he opposes the obstinacy of God who, in the testimony of people of flesh and blood, opens the heart and welcomes in his love.”
