Pope Leo XIV’s first apostolic exhortation, Dilexi Te (Latin for “I Have Loved You” and subtitled “To All Christians On Love for the Poor”), was signed Oct. 4, the feast day of St. Francis of Assisi, and publicly announced on Oct. 9, the feast day of St. John Henry Newman. A number of Catholic ethicists and theologians have published reflections on it. While I lack the time to engage these pieces here, I will highlight a couple of things that stood out to me about Delexi Te.

Although one of my friends, who is a senior theological ethicist, said to me when it appeared that “there is nothing new in it” — and I initially agreed — I would highlight how Pope Leo’s use of Scripture and the writings of theologians and saints (often in reference to Scripture) is very different from Pope Leo XIII’s reliance on more philosophical natural law reasoning in Rerum Novarum, which inaugurated modern Catholic social teaching in 1891.

To be sure, the Second Vatican Council’s call for moral theology’s “scientific exposition [to] be more thoroughly nourished by scriptural teaching” (Decree on Priestly Formation, no. 16) had influenced Pope John Paul II, whose “references to scripture in his encyclicals,” according to Charles E. Curran, “far outnumber any of the other references made within these documents” (The Moral Theology of Pope John Paul II [Georgetown University Press, 2005], 45). It may be an interesting exercise during Leo XIV’s papacy to compare his approach to Scripture with St. John Paul II’s.

In addition, Delexi Te is much more theological — and Christological — than papal documents from the past century. Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum mentions “Jesus,” “Christ,” or “Jesus Christ” less than a dozen times; in contrast, Leo XIV’s Delexi Te refers to him around 40 times. To be fair, Rerum Novarum‘s paragraphs 22-24 anticipate in many respects what Delexi Te says about Jesus, especially how he “for our sakes became poor” (Rerum Novarum, no. 23; Delexi Te, no. 18; both citing 2 Cor 8:9), and how he identifies with the “least of these” at the Judgment (Rerum Novarum, no. 22; Delexi Te, no. 5; both citing Matt 25:40).

Yet, there is a deeper Christological undercurrent in Delexi Te, I think. While Rerum Novarum refers to the Incarnation only once, and Delexi Te mentions the Incarnation only twice, what Leo XIV writes about it runs throughout his apostolic exhortation: “It is not enough to profess the doctrine of God’s Incarnation in general terms. To enter truly into this great mystery, we need to understand clearly that the Lord took on a flesh that hungers and thirsts, and experiences infirmity and imprisonment” (no. 110). Indeed, throughout Delexi Te, “flesh” is mentioned several times to refer both to Jesus and to the poor in ways that bring to my mind the Eucharist. In his article (see below) about Delexi Te, Stan Chu Ilo similarly observes, “To meet the poor is to meet Christ; to love them is to enter the Eucharistic economy.”

In my article (again, see below), I also note this connection between liturgy and social justice (I also wrote about it on this blog 14 years ago). Although absent in Rerum Novarum, this link was significant for a number of Catholic social ethicists and liturgical theologians, including Virgil Michel, OSB (and his Catholic Worker friend Dorothy Day, who wrote on “Liturgy and Sociology”). Accordingly, Vatican II’s Sacrosanctum Concilium, echoing Virgil Michel in many respects, taught that in “the sacred liturgy … is the primary and indispensable source from which the faithful are to derive the true Christian spirit” that should infuse our lives and work (no. 14). Even though Pope Leo XIV does not mention this connection explicitly, it is discernable in a number of places in Delexi Te.

Of course, unlike Rerum Novarum, which Pope Leo XIII wrote to his “Venerable Brethren the Patriarchs, Primates, Archbishops, Bishops, and other ordinaries of places having Peace and Communion with the Apostolic See,” and unlike most other papal encyclicals that were addressed also to “the faithful” and to people “of good will” (as well as Pope Francis’s Laudato Si‘, which was addressed to every human person on the planet), Pope Leo’s apostolic exhortation Delexi Te is addressed to “to all Christians,” so it makes sense that it is more biblical, theological, Christological, and liturgical.

So, here are some of the initial reactions to Delexi Te by my friends and colleagues. If I have neglected anyone, please share in the comments. Also, as more responses to it come out, feel free to share them in the comments.