IN A NEW encyclical titled “Dilexit Nos (He Loved Us),” Pope Francis called on Catholics to “regain the most important and necessary thing of all: its heart” in a world marked by consumerism and outbreaks of war.
In the document published Oct. 24, the pontiff said the heart has no place for deceit and disguise and criticized humanity’s “mad pursuit” of consumerism and materialism.
“In a world where everything is bought and sold, people’s sense of their worth appears increasingly to depend on what they can accumulate with the power of money,” he wrote.
“The love of Christ has no place in this perverse mechanism, yet only that love can set us free from a mad pursuit that no longer has room for a gratuitous love.”
Although the encyclical drew more on spiritual themes, unlike his largely political and social encyclicals “Laudato Si,” which tackled climate change, and “Fratelli Tutti,” which emphasized the social aftermath of the pandemic, Francis still lamented that modern society is in the “age of superficiality.”
Pope Francis stressed the importance of devotions and reparations to the Sacred Heart, popularized by St. Margaret Alacoque. The encyclical marks the 350th anniversary of the first apparition of the Sacred Heart to the 17th-century French visionary nun.
The pontiff said humanity’s core, rooted in the heart, is “depreciating” and “fragmented” as people have no more regard for the deeper meaning of their lives.
“We find ourselves immersed in societies of serial consumers who live from day to day, dominated by the hectic pace and bombarded by technology, lacking in the patience needed to engage in the processes that an interior life by its very nature requires. In contemporary society, people ‘risk losing their centre, the centre of their very selves,’” he said.
A prime example of the depreciation and fragmentation of the heart, the pontiff said, is the emergence of artificial intelligence (AI).
“In this age of artificial intelligence, we cannot forget that poetry and love are necessary to save our humanity,” Francis said.
“No algorithm will ever be able to capture, for example, the nostalgia that all of us feel, whatever our age, and wherever we live.”
AI has been widely regarded as the “future of humanity” that has a real chance of reaching human-level intelligence within the following decades, according to the online publication Our World in Data.
Francis also pointed to global conflicts as the reason humanity was losing its heart.
“When we witness the outbreak of new wars, with the complicity, tolerance or indifference of other countries, or petty power struggles over partisan interests, we may be tempted to conclude that our world is losing its heart.”
Regional clashes and humanitarian crises, such as the war between Russia and Ukraine, and Israel and Palestine, have killed thousands of civilians.
In the opening Mass at the second session of the Synod on Synodality at the Vatican, the pope also underscored how the Middle East was inching closer to a regional conflict following heavy airstrikes carried out by Israel at the south of Beirut, Lebanon.
Amid these issues, Francis said only Jesus’ love could “bring about a new humanity,” solidifying the need to rediscover the importance of having a heart.
“Everything finds its unity in the heart,” he wrote.
“In a word, if love reigns in our heart, we become, in a complete and luminous way, the persons we are meant to be, for every human being is created above all else for love. In the deepest fibre of our being, we were made to love and to be loved.”
The 142-page encyclical is Francis’ fourth in his 11 years as pope.
It drew from various sources, including the gospel, the saints, German philosopher Martin Heidegger, and Argentinian Fr. Diego Fares.
Encyclicals are the highest form of papal teaching, presented as open letters to bishops and pastors and all people of goodwill. R.V.P. Misa
