Pope Leo XIV Honors Predecessor's Legacy During Visit to Argentina
Pope Leo XIV recently traveled to Argentina to retrace the ministry of his predecessor, the late Pope Francis. During his visit, the pontiff emphasized the importance of prioritizing the poor and supporting the dignity of labor for all citizens. He met with various grassroots organizations, including waste pickers and artisans, to advocate for social inclusion and economic protections. Local residents shared personal reflections on their interactions with the former Archbishop of Buenos Aires, highlighting the enduring impact of his service. The visit serves as a symbolic continuation of the Church's commitment to those living on the margins of society.
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Pope Leo XIV’s four-day visit to Argentina retraced places and pastoral priorities associated with Pope Francis, emphasizing the dignity of work, support for grassroots movements, care for the poor and protection of democratic institutions. His approach echoed his predecessor’s commitments while placing particular emphasis on dialogue and national unity. 1
Leo visited Buenos Aires Cathedral, where Jorge Mario Bergoglio served as archbishop before his election as pope, and the Pequeño Cottolengo Don Orione, a charitable institution associated with Francis’s ministry. At the Catholic University of Argentina, where Francis had been grand chancellor, Leo met workers, business leaders, unions and popular movements. 1
Francis never returned to his homeland during his 12-year pontificate. The articles report that scholars and Argentines saw his absence partly in light of the risk that a visit could be interpreted as support for a particular political administration, amid the country’s divisions. 1
In his meeting with workers, Leo cited waste pickers, farmers and artisans as examples of people organizing to address economic hardship. He invoked the principles of “tierra, techo y trabajo”—land, housing and work—and said economic activity should serve human dignity rather than measure people solely by their productivity. He also urged governments and businesses to protect vulnerable workers and support employment and social inclusion. 1
The articles illustrate these concerns through Mirta Franco Godoy, who began collecting cardboard during Argentina’s 2001 economic crisis to support her family. Waste pickers, known as cartoneros, organized into cooperatives and a union after facing resistance, including from police; some previously received supplemental payments and access to sorting facilities. Godoy said those payments and funding for improvements in poor neighborhoods had since disappeared, telling Catholic News Service, “Everything has gone backwards.” 1
Leo did not directly address Godoy’s account of the cuts. In his remarks to workers, however, he said governments and corporations should strengthen grassroots initiatives rather than replace them—a position the articles connect to Francis’s support for popular movements and informal workers. 1
Addressing President Javier Milei and other officials on Nov. 8, Leo urged the protection of democratic institutions, listening across political differences and exercising authority for the common good. He said the state has a responsibility to promote the welfare of all citizens, including people who work but struggle to support their families. 1
Leo also emphasized that care for the poor includes spiritual attention as well as material assistance, recalling Francis’s support for the curas villeros—priests who live and minister in Buenos Aires’s impoverished settlements. At the Don Orione institution, he affirmed the dignity of people with disabilities, saying their lives are “not a burden on society.” 1
Local estimates cited in the articles put attendance at Leo’s Nov. 9 Buenos Aires Mass at 2.5 million, the Nov. 10 prayer vigil at 1 million, and the Nov. 11 Mass outside the Basilica of Our Lady of Luján at more than 2 million. An estimated 650,000 attended a Nov. 10 Mass in Córdoba. 1
The articles describe Francis’s legacy in Argentina as both deeply personal and politically contested, with some political groups seeking to claim his words and actions. Theologian David Lantigua characterized Leo as continuing Francis’s mission with a stronger emphasis on unity, while people interviewed during the visit expressed hope that it could open a new chapter and foster greater cohesion. 1
The Church’s preferential option for the poor and the dignity of work
The Church’s preferential option for the poor and her teaching on the dignity of work belong together: the Church must see and serve Christ in people who are poor, while also defending the conditions that let people work and support their families with dignity. The option is not a partisan preference or a judgment that some people matter more than others. It is a distinctive form of Christian charity, rooted in Christ’s closeness to the poor and calling the whole Church to practical concern for them. Work, in turn, is not merely a way to make money: it is a human activity with dignity, ordered to the worker’s good and service of others—not a process in which people become instruments of profit.
Pope Francis described the option for the poor as “primarily a theological category”: it arises from who God is and from the Christian recognition that Christ became poor. It therefore shapes the life of every Christian, not only charitable organizations or specialists in social issues. The poor are not simply a group to be discussed or managed; Christians are called to encounter Christ in them, listen to them, and recognize that they can also teach the Church.
Pope Leo XIV’s Dilexi te develops this point by saying that the poor are not merely a sociological category but the “flesh” of Christ. The Church’s concern must therefore be concrete: it involves people who hunger, suffer illness, experience exclusion, or are imprisoned—not poverty as an abstract topic. Leo also warns that a community cannot remain faithfully Christian while ignoring the vulnerable or treating concern for the poor as someone else’s responsibility.
“Preferential” does not mean that the Church excludes anyone else from her mission. The Church’s teaching on Christian freedom states that this preference “excludes no one”; it is not meant to become a partisan or ideological choice. Rather, special attention is owed to people whose poverty, exclusion, or powerlessness leaves them especially exposed to hardship and neglect. The same teaching emphasizes that a person’s dignity cannot be erased by poverty or rejection: a human being is worth more for who he or she is than for what he or she possesses.
The Christian understanding of work begins with the dignity of the worker. Human labor can share in the ongoing work of creation and help sustain family life; it can also be a way of serving one’s brothers and sisters. But work must remain ordered to the human person. John Paul II summarizes the principle this way: “work is ‘for man’ and not man ‘for work.’”
That principle challenges any arrangement that treats workers as disposable, or values them only as inputs into production. It also explains the Church’s teaching that labor has priority over capital: capital and the means of production are instruments, while human labor is carried out by persons and must not be subordinated to profit as though workers were machinery. The Church’s concern is not opposed to productive work or economic activity; it insists that these serve the good of persons and society.
Because work matters to human dignity and family life, workers have rights connected to it. The supplied Catholic teaching identifies, among others, the right to just wages and rest; safe working conditions; respect for conscience and personal dignity; social protections in unemployment, old age, sickness, work-related accidents, and maternity; and the right to form associations. A just wage should enable a worker to provide a dignified livelihood for himself or herself and the family—not merely reflect what the more powerful party is willing to pay or what market forces alone happen to produce.
The option for the poor cannot be reduced to occasional relief, though direct charity remains indispensable. The Church’s teaching also calls for defending people in hardship and promoting social conditions that respect human dignity. That includes concern for workers whose wages, rights, or working conditions leave them vulnerable, as well as for people who want work but cannot find suitable employment. Unemployment can bring material hardship and also undermine a person’s sense of usefulness, harm family life, and weaken society.
At the same time, it would be a mistake to say that poverty is solved simply by telling poor people to work. Dilexi te explicitly criticizes the separation of spiritual care from human development and the claim that the Church’s role is only to teach people to work while others attend to their circumstances. The dignity of work does not make a person’s worth depend on having a job, nor does it remove society’s responsibility to consider unjust conditions and the needs of people who are unemployed. Work is a human good; it is not a test by which the dignity of the poor is measured.
Nor should care for the poor be confined to material assistance alone. Leo XIV calls attention to the need for preferential religious care as well as social and material concern. The Church’s service should address the whole person: material needs, spiritual life, and the social conditions that affect human flourishing.
For Christians, these teachings shape both personal conduct and public responsibility. Benedict XVI applies them to professional life: work can be a setting for personal development and service, not primarily profit, and Christians are called to put the option for the poor into practice whatever their position in society. That can mean treating employees and co-workers as persons rather than costs, respecting just working conditions, and considering how one’s work serves others.
For the Church as a community, the same principles mean listening to people experiencing poverty, offering practical and spiritual support, defending their dignity, and seeking just social conditions. For society, they offer a standard for judging economic arrangements: do they serve people and families, respect workers’ rights, and make room for those excluded from employment—or do they treat human beings as disposable in pursuit of profit? The preferential option and the dignity of work together insist that the poor are not burdens to be discarded and workers are not tools to be used. Both are persons whose dignity calls for concrete respect.