Pope Leo XIV's first Apostolic Exhortation, "On Love for the Poor," released on October 4, 2025, although written in a broader context, offers important reminders for Catholic health care in India and around the world. In this Exhortation, Pope Leo presents Pope Francis's unfinished work and adds his own reflections.

We are reminded that "Love for the Lord ... is one with love for the poor" (Dilexi Te 5) and that the cry of the poor continues unabated. This cry "challenges our lives, societies, political and economic systems, and, not least, the Church (DT 9). We are also reminded that forms and faces of poverty – "... the poverty of those who lack the material means of subsistence, the poverty of those who are marginalised and lack the means to give voice to their dignity and abilities, moral and spiritual poverty, cultural poverty, the poverty of those who find themselves in a condition of personal or social weakness or fragility, the poverty of those who have no rights, no space, no freedom." (DT 9)

Catholic health care needs to ensure that it does not fall into the trap of assuming that the commercialisation of medicine (through capitalist interventions) is synonymous with improved health care. Indeed, such an approach can push people even further into poverty through exorbitant out-of-pocket health care expenditure. We need only look to history to recognise that improved health at a population level requires basic measures that ensure better nutrition, sanitation, water supply, education, and improved living and working conditions (the social determinants of health).

If Catholic health care in India recognises the needs of the poor and the marginalised at a population level as a priority, we must accept that large, corporate-type hospitals do not provide the answer, and that while they may well serve a purpose to take care of specialised health care needs (for a section of the population), they do not meet the broader health needs at the level of the population.

Health care services today commodify the human person in a variety of ways: through statistical algorithms (where they are a variable or a statistic), financial incentives (where they are a means to an end), and a rapidly growing technological imperative (where they are reduced to consumers).

Catholic moral tradition in health care, by contrast, respects and affirms the dignity of the human person, practised through compassion, respect for diversity, freedom of conscience, informed consent, and integrity. The Church asserts the dignity of all, especially through the care for the poor, the marginalised and the uninsured, while committing to excellence in health services. As Catholics, we dehumanise both caregivers and patients when we break the covenant of trust, which is the moral centre of the healing relationship. Adhering to the mission of the Catholic healing ministry requires courage because it goes "against the grain" of popular thought.

Health care today in the for-profit private sector is highly commercialised and commodified, and focused on bottom-line profits, which underpins competition in the 'market.' These approaches are typically justified on the grounds of sustainability. Sustainability is a real issue, and while Catholic health care institutions need to be financially prudent, they are also expected to foster a genuine encounter with the patient. If we fail to do this, we ignore the relational nature of the encounter between the health care provider and the patient and reduce them to 'consumables' or 'sources of revenue.' We cannot expect the public to distinguish between Catholic health care and other participants in the health care sector if we barter our identity and mission for short-term gains. We need to reflect on whether we have been guilty of uncritically embracing current financial models of health care, and of undervaluing what patients may really need – accessible, affordable, competent, compassionate, ethical and trustworthy care.

In Dilexi Te we are reminded that the "poor are not there by chance or by blind and cruel fate" (DT 14). A specious view of 'meritocracy' fails to recognise the socio-cultural and historical antecedents of poverty. Care of the sick "is not simply a philanthropic endeavour, but an ecclesial action through which members of the Church 'touch the suffering flesh of Christ'" (DT 49). For Christians, therefore, service to the poor is not a laudable act; it is an article of faith – "The poor cannot be neglected if we are to remain within the great current of the Church's life that has its source in the Gospel and bears fruit in every time and place" (DT 15).