Pope Francis answers questions on the poor

Your words about the poor as the ‘flesh of Christ’ have shocked many people.

Jan 16, 2015

Your words about the poor as the ‘flesh of Christ’ have shocked many people.

St Francis helped us discover the deep connection between poverty and the way of the Gospel. Jesus states that we cannot serve two masters, God and wealth.

Jesus tells us what the ‘protocol’ is, on which we will be judged. It is the one we read in chapter 25 of Matthew’s Gospel: I was hungry, I was thirsty, I was in prison, I was sick, I was naked and you helped me, clothed me, visited me, took care of me. Whenever we do this to one of our brothers, we do this to Jesus. Caring for our neighbour; for those who are poor, who suffer in body and in soul, for those who are in need. This is the touchstone.

No, it is the Gospel. Poverty takes us away from idolatry and from feeling self-sufficient. Zacchaeus, after he met Jesus’ merciful gaze, gave half of his fortune away to the poor. The Gospel’s message is for everyone, the Gospel does not condemn the wealthy, but the idolatry of wealth, the idolatry that makes people indifferent to the call of the poor. Jesus said that, before we offer our gift upon the altar, we must reconcile with our brother to be at peace with him.

I think that, by analogy, we can extend this request to being at peace with these poor brothers.’

You highlighted the continuity with the tradition of the Church in its concern for the poor. Can you give us some examples of this?
A month before he opened the Second Vatican Council, Pope John XXIII said ‘The Church shows itself as it wishes to be, everyone’s Church, and particularly the Church of the poor.’ In the following years, this preferential treatment of the poor entered the official teachings.

Some may think it a novelty, whilst instead, it is a concern that stems from the Gospel and is documented even from the first centuries of Christianity. If I repeated some passages from the homilies of the Church Fathers, in the second or third century, about how we must treat the poor, some would accuse me of giving a Marxist homily.

‘You are not making a gift of what is yours to the poor man, but you are giving him back what is his. You have been appropriating things that are meant to be for the common use of everyone. The earth belongs to everyone, not to the rich.’ These were St Ambrose’s words, which Pope Paul VI used to state, in Populorum Progressio, that private property does not constitute an absolute and unconditional right for anyone, and that no one is allowed to keep for their exclusive use things superfluous to their needs, when others lack basic necessities. St John Chrysostom stated that ‘not sharing your goods with the poor means robbing them and taking away their life. The goods we own are not ours but theirs’. (…) As we can see, this concern for the poor is in the Gospel, it is within the tradition of the Church, it is not an invention of communism and it must not be turned into an ideology, as has sometimes happened before in the course of history. The Church, when it invites us to overcome what I have called ‘the globalisation of indifference’, is free from any political interest and any ideology. It is moved only by Jesus’ words, and wants to offer its contribution to build a world where we look after one another and care for each other.’ --Vatican Insider

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