The Exhortation focuses on love for the poor as a constitutive sign of faith: ‘faith cannot be separated from love for the poor.’ In this context, Leo XIV’s teaching recalls historical figures who concretely embodied this profound link between charity and the Gospel.
In particular, in paragraph 51 — and in other passages — the Exhortation celebrates the role of consecrated women who, with maternal tenderness, have become instruments of healing, listening and presence in places of suffering: hospitals, nursing homes, retirement homes. It is in this context that the reference to the Daughters of Charity of St Vincent de Paul and the memory of St Louise de Marillac emerge. The text recognises that they have built oases of dignity, taught hygiene, assisted in childbirth, administered medicine with faith and wisdom — welcoming poverty as a way of encountering Christ. (On this: “The touch of compassion was the first medicine.”)
When the document refers to their works as a concrete expression of the preferential option for the poor, it does not merely praise them: it inserts them into the current ecclesial design as living examples of how the Church can (and must) continue to make active charity a sacrament of divine proximity.
Thus, St. Vincent and St. Louise are not nostalgic figures of the past, but spiritual companions who illuminate the Church’s action towards the poor today. They embodied – each with their own charism – the vision that Dilexi te invites us to realise: not a residual charity, but a charity that differentiates, structures and transforms.
We live in a time when the cry of the poor is often stifled by the scandal of inequality. But Dilexi te reminds us (and challenges us) that Christ continues to speak in the faces of those who suffer. If the Vincentian family takes up the charism of St. Vincent and St. Louise with renewed boldness, it will be able to bear witness that the Church does not forget, does not give up, does not delegate elsewhere the task of living mercy.
