Pope Leo XIV Highlights Importance of Caring for All "offering time, listening, support, and prayer...looking into the eyes, shaking hands"

ADDRESS OF HIS HOLINESS POPE LEO XIV
TO THE GROUP OF THE WORK OF ST. FRANCIS FOR THE POOR

Clementine Hall
Monday, September 1, 2025
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In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
Peace be with you! Truly, we can begin with "peace and goodness"!

Dear brothers and sisters, welcome!

I am delighted to meet you, members of the Opera San Francesco per i Poveri . For nearly seventy years, your institution has been committed to "ensuring assistance and hospitality to people in need and [...] promoting the comprehensive human development of the person in accordance with Christian tradition, especially Franciscan tradition, the doctrine of the Church and its Magisterium" (Fondazione Opera San Francesco per i Poveri, Statute , 3).

The Society was born from the generous heart of a humble doorman, the Venerable Fra Cecilio Maria Cortinovis, sensitive to the needs of the poor who knocked at the door of the Capuchin Convent on Viale Piave, Milan. The good friar had asked the Lord to help him provide these friends with better care, and Providence answered him, placing another generous person alongside him: Dr. Emilio Grignani. Thus began the beautiful adventure of which all of you are witnesses and protagonists today.

What you do follows in the Franciscan tradition, and it is good to remember some words of St. Francis on the poor: "When you see a poor person," said the Saint of Assisi, "you are placed before the mirror of the Lord and his poor Mother. Likewise, in the sick, know how to see the infirmities with which Jesus took on himself" (St. Bonaventure, Major Legend , 8, 5: Franciscan Sources , 1142). And one day, wanting to give his cloak to a needy person and reflecting on the fraternal sharing of God's gifts, he stated: "We must return the cloak [...] [to] the poor person: because it is his. In fact, we received it on loan, until we happened to find someone poorer than ourselves" (ibid., 1143).

Dearly beloved, today we remember a story of charity that, born from the faith of one man, flourished, giving life to a great community promoting peace and justice. We celebrate a story made not of benefactors and beneficiaries, but of brothers and sisters who recognize one another as a gift from God, his presence, and mutual support on a path to holiness. We honor the Body of Christ, wounded yet continually healing, whose members help one another, united to the Head in the same love (cf. St. Augustine, Sermon 53/A , 6); and precisely for this reason we see a living body, growing day by day toward its full maturity.

The Statute of the Opera San Francesco for the Poor highlights three dimensions of your work, which constitute complementary and fundamental aspects of charity: assisting , welcoming and promoting .

Caring means being present for the needs of others. And in this regard, the quantity and variety of services you've managed to organize and offer to those who turn to you over the years is impressive: from cafeterias to coat checks, from showers to clinics, from psychological support services to job counseling, to name a few, helping in various ways more than thirty thousand people a year.

This is accompanied by welcoming , that is, making room for others in our hearts and lives, offering time, listening, support, and prayer. It is the attitude of looking into the eyes, shaking hands, and bowing down, so dear to Pope Francis (see Jubilee Audience , April 9, 2016), which pushes us to cultivate a family atmosphere in our environments and helps us overcome the loneliness of the "I" through the luminous communion of the "we" (see id., Prayer Vigil with Young Italians , August 11, 2018). How much we need to spread this sensitivity in our society, where isolation is sometimes tragic!

And so we come to the third point: promoting . Here, the selflessness of giving and respect for the dignity of people come into play, so that we care for those we encounter simply for their good, so that they can grow to their full potential and proceed on their own path, without expecting anything in return and without imposing conditions. Just as God does with each of us, showing us a path, offering us all the help necessary to follow it, but then leaving us free. Saint John Paul II , in this regard, wrote: "It is a question [...] of effectively increasing the dignity and creativity of each individual person, their capacity to respond to their own vocation and, therefore, to God's call contained within it" (Encyclical Letter Centesimus Annus , 1 May 1991, 29).

This, dearest ones, is the task the Church entrusts to you, for the benefit of the people who gravitate around the institutions you manage and of society as a whole. Practicing charity through concern for the integral well-being of others, in fact, "is a great opportunity for the moral, cultural, and even economic growth of humanity as a whole" ( ibid ., 28). Thank you for what you do and for the witness you give by your journey together! I accompany you with my prayers and bless you wholeheartedly.

Thank you! Peace and goodness! Best wishes and thank you, thank you all!