Pope To World Rulers: Utilize Wealth To Help

SPEAKING ON THE evil of using “wealth against humanity,” by “turning it into weapons that destroy people or monopolies that humiliate workers,” Pope Leo XIV called on the world leaders to use money and resources to promote the common good of people and the world. 

In his homily in the Church of Saint Anne in Vatican City, the pope expounded that “whoever serves God (should) become free from wealth, but whoever serves wealth remains its slave.”

Accordingly, the former American Archbishop reminded that “whoever seeks justice transforms wealth into the common good” and “whoever seeks domination turns the common good into prey for their own greed.”

Pope Leo touched his homily on the day’s Gospel reading recounting Jesus Christ’s parable of the dishonest steward from Luke 16:1-13 which ended with Jesus saying, “No servant can serve two masters. He will either hate one and love the other or be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and mammon.”

During both the morning Mass in the small church located just inside Vatican City State and in his midday Angelus address with thousands of pilgrims and visitors in St. Peter’s Square, the pontiff urged Catholics to consider the idea of delineating relationships to money and material goods.

He likewise used his Angelus address to express gratitude to Catholic organizations that have been holding prayer vigils for peace and raising money for humanitarian aid to Gaza.

“I appreciate your initiative and many others throughout the Church that express closeness to our brothers and sisters who are suffering in that tormented land,” he noted.

“Together with you and with the pastors of the churches in the Holy Land, I repeat: There is no future based on violence, forced exile or revenge. The people need peace; those who truly love them work for peace,” he added. 

Prior to his Angelus, Leo had prayed at the mass in St. Anne Church that parishioners would “persevere with hope in a time seriously threatened by war.”

“Entire peoples today are being crushed by violence and even more so by a shameless indifference that abandons them to a fate of misery,” he told parishioners. “Faced with these tragedies, we do not want to be resigned, but to proclaim in word and deed that Jesus is the savior of the world, the one who delivers us from all evil.”

In recap, he admonished that the Holy Spirit would convert hearts “so that, nourished by the Eucharist—the Church’s supreme treasure—(people) may become witnesses of charity and peace.”

“Jesus’ parable “invites us to ask ourselves: How are we managing the material goods, the resources of the earth and our very lives that God has entrusted to us? Each person must make a choice—we can follow the way of selfishness, placing wealth above all else and thinking only of ourselves. But this isolates us from others and spreads the poison of competition, which often fuels conflict,” he quipped.