On the second day of his visit to Equatorial Guinea, a predominantly Catholic country of 1.8 million people in central Africa, Pope Leo XIV issued an unequivocal call to authorities “to serve the common good rather than private interests, bridging the gap between the privileged and the disadvantaged.”
Poverty
Posted inVatican Dispatch
Pope Leo preaches on hunger to 120,000 at Mass in Cameroon
Pope Leo drew attention to the food crisis and the poverty that is causing great suffering for so many people, even though the land is rich in agricultural and other resources.
Posted inFaith and Reason
What A.I. has to do with poverty and human dignity
How can we in the church ensure that the voices of the most vulnerable remain at the center of discussions about artificial intelligence?
Posted inCatholic Book Club
25 years later, ‘Nickel and Dimed’ is as relevant as ever.
Between spring 1998 and summer 2000, Barbara Ehrenreich took jobs that paid minimum wage or slightly above in Florida, Maine and Minnesota. What she detailed was a world of people living on a financial razor’s edge, unable to afford healthy food or decent housing, but still holding down two and three jobs to try to make ends meet.
Posted inIdeas
Acts of service on display: The Catholic Charities People of Hope Museum shows neighbors helping neighbors
The Catholic Charities People of Hope Museum made its debut on March 26 in New York City, kicking off a three-year travel schedule that will take the museum to locations all across the United States. The project, funded by a grant from the Lilly Foundation, aims to engage in “immersive storytelling” that shares stories of “neighbors helping neighbors.”
Posted inVatican Dispatch
On World Day of the Poor, Pope Leo calls on government leaders ‘to listen to the cry of the poorest’
Pope Francis established the day in 2016 as a reminder that the poor are “at the heart of the Gospel.” Leo has shown that he is following the same path.
Posted inThe Weekly Dispatch
The government shutdown has ended. But America’s hunger crisis continues.
With food insecurity on the rise across the country, SNAP became a political football during the federal shutdown as President Trump saw the program as leverage against Senate Democrats.
Posted inArts & Culture, Catholic Book Club
Michael Harrington, the ‘pious apostate’ who championed socialism in America
Michael Harrington was America’s much-needed conscience on issues of poverty in the 1960s and later.
Posted inFaith in Focus
Pope Leo (and The Beatles) are right: Money can’t buy us love.
The people we meet as we go about God’s work are more important and more life-changing than any amount of money we could donate.
Posted inVatican Dispatch
Pope Leo says global hunger is a sign of ‘soulless economy’ and a ‘collective failure’
In a forceful speech on Oct. 16 to the general assembly of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization in Rome, Pope Leo XIV called out the failure of the international community to eliminate hunger in today’s world and strongly denounced “the use of hunger as a weapon of war.”