When Pope Leo XIV signed his first major document — the apostolic exhortation Dilexi te (“I Have Loved You”) — he did so on 4 October 2025, the feast of St. Francis of Assisi, and released it on 9 October. The title echoes a simple truth: God loves us, and our faith must show this love in how we treat the poor, the weak, and the excluded.
In his message, Pope Leo reminds us that faith and love cannot be separated. He writes: “On the wounded faces of the poor we see the suffering of the innocent and, therefore, the suffering of Christ himself.” In our country, Nigeria, today, where many live with hunger, joblessness, insecurity or exclusion, Pope Leo XIV’s apostolic exhortation is a call to live the Gospel in ordinary places: the home, the market, the school, the parish.
For the faithful of the Archdiocese of Onitsha this exhortation arrives at a time when we wrestle with real challenges: rising living costs, youth unemployment, and so on. The Pope’s appeal touches our situation directly. He urges us to recognise the poor as brothers and sisters; to avoid indifferent comfort and to act from mercy and justice.
What does this mean for our community? It means that when our Church builds youth hostels, runs scholarship programmes, opens hospitals or reaches out to prisoners, these works respond to the heart of Dilexi te. It means our parish self-help groups, our youth empowerment, our care for widows and orphans matter — not just as charity, but as faithful response to Christ’s love.
Pope Leo also warns against serving money or power instead of God and the poor. He writes about how some comfort zones become barriers to real service. This is a challenge to each of us — layperson, priest, leader — to ask: when I give, when I speak, when I act, am I living Christ’s love or maintaining my privilege?
In the Archdiocese of Onitsha, under the leadership of Archbishop Valerian Maduka Okeke, we see signs of this teaching at work. From youth formation to education, from prison outreach to health initiatives, the commitment to the poor and to faithful service shows that love is more than emotion — it is action. Our hope is that Dilexi te will deepen this commitment, move it further, and bring into every parish, every school and every home the truth that God has loved us — and counts on us to love in return.
As we reflect on this new exhortation, let us pray: may our faith open our eyes to the poor, may our charity stir our hands, and may our community become a living sign that in Onitsha, the love of Christ reaches the least and forms the best.
