Pope Benedict XVI: A message from God: people have a duty to feed the poor, too

The church's social teaching has always been concerned with the poor.

At the time of the Encyclical Letter Rerum Novarum, the poor were identified mainly as the workers in the new industrial society, new forms of poverty were gradually explored, as the scope of social question widened to reach global proportions. This expansion of the social question to the worldwide scale has to be considered as a qualitative growth in the understanding of man and the needs of the human family.

For this reason, while attentively following the current phenomena of globalisation and their impact on human poverty, the Church points out the new aspects of the social question, not only in their breadth but also in their depth, insofar as they concern man's identity and his relationship with God. These principles of social teaching tend to clarify the links between poverty and globalisation and they help to guide action towards the building of peace. Among them, it is timely to recall in particular the "preferential love for the poor", in the light of the primacy of charity, which is attested throughout Christian tradition.

"Everyone should put his hand to the work which falls to his share, at once and immediately", wrote Leo XIII in 1891, adding: "In regard to the Church, her cooperation will never be wanting, be the time or the occasion what it may". It is in this spirit that the Church carries out her work for the poor, in whom she sees Christ, and she constantly hears echoing in her heart the command of the Prince of Peace to his Apostles: "Vos date illis manducare – Give them something to eat yourselves." Faithful to this summons from the Lord, the Christian community will never fail to assure the entire human family of her support through gestures of creative solidarity, not only by "giving from one's surplus", but above all by "a change of lifestyles, of models of production and consumption, and of the established structures of power which today govern societies". At the start of the New Year, then, I extend to every disciple of Christ and to every person of good will a warm invitation to expand their hearts to meet the needs of the poor and to take whatever practical steps are possible in order to help them. The truth of the axiom cannot be refuted: "To fight poverty is to build peace."

This is an edited extract from His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI's New Year message