Dilexi te
apostolic exhortation of Pope Leo XIV
Dilexi te (English: "I have loved you") is the first apostolic exhortation of Pope Leo XIV, signed on 4 October 2025 and released on 9 October 2025. The exhortation, which was released on the feast day of Saint Francis, focuses on Christ's love for the poor and the call for the Church to renew its commitment to those most in need. It is subtitled "on love for the poor".
The official presentation of the exhortation took place on 9 October 2025 at the Holy See Press Office, with the participation of Cardinal Michael Czerny , prefect of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development; Cardinal Konrad Krajewski, papal almoner; Father Frédéric-Marie Le Méhauté ; and Sister Clémence , a religious sister who works among the Roma women of southern Italy.
History
Dilexi te follows Pope Francis's fourth and final encyclical, Dilexit nos, subtitled "on the human and divine love of the Heart of Jesus Christ", and released on 24 October 2024. This connection highlights the thematic continuity regarding Christ's love for humanity (DT, Introduction). Francis died on 21 April 2025 and was succeeded by Pope Leo XIV. Reuters reported in September 2025 that Leo intended to release a document to "signal continuity with his predecessor Pope Francis and focus on the needs of the world's poor".
According to the introduction, early drafts of Dilexi te were prepared by Pope Francis in the months before his death, and Leo XIV decided to complete it with his own contributions (DT, 3). Of the document's 130 citations, 57 are to works by Francis.
Central themes
In Dilexi te, Pope Leo XIV places poverty at the center of his reflection, presenting it as a structural and universal issue affecting all societies (DT, ch.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Dilexi te” as apostolic exhortation of Pope Leo XIV. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as apostolic exhortation of Pope Leo XIV. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 9, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q136450956. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2025 and 2024.
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This entry incorporates text from “Dilexi te” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.