Vatican City, Nov 16 (EFE).- Pope Leo XIV lamented this Sunday the forms of poverty that "oppress the world" during the Mass for the Jubilee of the Poor and exhorted rulers to take responsibility, warning, "there can be no peace without social justice." "Poverty challenges Christians, but it also challenges all those in society who have roles of responsibility. I therefore call upon Heads of State and the Responsible Nations of the World to listen to the cry of the poorest," he urged. The American pontiff presided this Sunday in St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican over a Mass attended by thousands of people in need who have made a pilgrimage to Rome from all over the world thanks to the help of charitable associations and volunteer groups. The faithful were so numerous that about 12,000 had to follow the rite from screens in St. Peter's Square, where the pope came out to greet them: "The basilica was a bit too small for us," he explained, according to the official Vatican News portal. In his homily, Leo XIV, who dedicated his first exhortation 'Dilexi te' (2025) to "the last" of society, exclaimed that "there can be no peace without social justice" in the world. "The poor remind us of this in many ways, with their migration or with their cry so often stifled by the myth of well-being and progress that does not take everyone into account and even forgets many creatures, abandoning them to their own fate," he denounced. In this sense, he maintained that there are several types of poverty that "oppress" the world, as they range from material to "many moral and spiritual" situations, especially among young people, and all have in common "loneliness." Therefore, before what he defines as the "globalization of powerlessness" that spreads the false idea that the world cannot change, especially regarding the wars in the world, he called for cultivating a "culture of care" against the "wall of loneliness." "We must be attentive to the other, to each one, wherever we are, wherever we live, transmitting this attitude already in the family, to live it at work, in the different communities, in the digital world, everywhere, reaching the peripheries," he urged. Because, he recalled, human coexistence must be a "space of fraternity and dignity for all," immediately adding: "without excluding anyone." After the Mass concluded in the Vatican basilica, the pope will preside over the traditional Sunday Angelus and then lunch with a group of 1,300 poor people in the Paul VI Hall, as well as with about 50 transgender women invited for the occasion.
