Ross Douthat, New York Times
Thursday, October 16, 2025
It’s fitting that Leo XIV’s first apostolic exhortation, Dilexi te, is a meditation on Christian obligations to the poor, one effectively written with his immediate predecessor, Pope Francis. It is a sharp critique of libertarian visions of political economy that insists capitalism must be gentled for the sake of basic human goods. That’s consistent with John Paul II and Benedict XVI, no less than Francis. However, there is a danger in vagueness and vapor, in offering pious-sounding exhortations that never condense into clear recommendations and whose applications seem to be overtaken by events.
