Pope Leo XIV’s first Apostolic Exhortation, Dilexi te, was thrust upon the world earlier today.
What can I say? I read it. It was about the poor. I had a headache. It was hardly inspiring.
It was also presented as the “completion” of an unfinished document by his predecessor. (The unintended symbolism of this is staggering: Leo is here to finish what Francis started.)
It arrived clothed in the familiar language of mercy, urging the Church to rediscover her love for the poor. It quotes Scripture, the Fathers, and the saints with reverence, insisting that holiness without charity is a contradiction. No Catholic can dispute that. Yet beneath the fragrance of Gospel citations lies a troubling — though unsurprising — vagueness: the familiar haze of post-conciliar rhetoric, where zeal for the poor drifts unmoored from doctrinal clarity.
The exhortation speaks eloquently of “structures” and “systems” that demand conversion, yet never defines them. It condemns “injustice” but refuses to say who or what is unjust. The result is moral poetry rather than moral theology. By avoiding precision, the text invites readers to baptize whatever ideology presently parades as compassion. It also reads as though the Pope asked someone at the UN to write it — who then tasked AI to finish the job.
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