Living our faith means building a society that values all people.
We experience true joy by being in right relationship with God, each other, and creation. Catholic Social Teaching reminds us that each person has inherent dignity, which includes having their basic needs met. We identify injustice by recognizing the inequities between those with greater and fewer economic resources.
Jesus teaches that our salvation depends on how we as a society treat the least among us (Mt. 25). Through encounter with one another, the rich and the poor together encounter the joy of the Gospel and are mutually transformed.
Read additional thoughts from Pope Francis: The Church has realized that the need to heed [the cry of the poor] is itself born of the liberating action of grace within each of us, and thus it is not a question of a mission reserved only to a few: “The Church, guided by the Gospel of mercy and by love for mankind, hears the cry for justice and intends to respond to it with all her might”..
In this context we can understand Jesus’ command to his disciples: “You yourselves give them something to eat!” (Mk 6:37): it means working to eliminate the structural causes of poverty and to promote the integral development of the poor, as well as small daily acts of solidarity in meeting the real needs which we encounter. (Evangelii Gaudium, 188).
Additional Reading: Read Economic Justice for All, the U.S. Bishops’ pastoral letter on Catholic Social Teaching and the U.S. economy.
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