A Shared Calling: Making the World Day of the Poor an Ecumenical Witness
There is a war on empathy taking place in American society. As social services and healthcare are being stripped away from the poor, many within the Christian faith justify these actions by equating care for the poor with weakness.
During the early part of Donald Trump’s second term, arguments against empathy gained momentum. As his administration cut foreign aid and increased deportations, figures like Elon Musk called empathy “the fundamental weakness of Western civilization.”1 Vice President JD Vance echoed this sentiment, claiming that love should be ordered with family first and the wider world last, a view Pope Francis later critiqued.2 In a setting where the very notion of empathy – and especially empathy for the poor – is being attacked, there is a great need for faith-based witness that lifts up the dignity of the poor.
In the coming weeks, on November 16th, the 33rd Sunday in Ordinary Time, the Roman Catholic Church will celebrate the eighth World Day of the Poor.3 This global observance was established by the late Pope Francis in 2017 as a way to turn Roman Catholics’ attention toward the centrality of Jesus’ Good News for the poor in the Gospels, an opportunity to remind the faithful that we will be judged by how we treat the poor (Matthew 25), and that, in Francis’ words, “so long as Lazarus remains at our gate” (Luke 16), the Church’s work is not yet done.
Such a day could bring Christians together around a shared commitment to the poor through both charity and structural change, even as different traditions bring their respective insights to the table.
As an Episcopalian, I deeply admired Pope Francis’s focus on poverty and am hopeful for Pope Leo’s continuation of this emphasis. Yet, as someone who is not a Roman Catholic, I also hope that this World Day of the Poor might spur the wider Christian family toward an ecumenical observance of the day. Such a day could bring Christians together around a shared commitment to the poor through both charity and structural change, even as different traditions bring their respective insights to the table.
The first observance of the World Day of the Poor was relatively contained: a Eucharist at St. Peter’s Basilica, followed by a meal for homeless people and the opening of a free medical clinic nearby. In later years, national observances took place in countries such as Poland and others, where services were paired with charitable outreach and advocacy. In many regions, the celebration extended beyond a single day to include a full week of prayer, service, and policy engagement.
Pope Leo is continuing this tradition. In his recent letter announcing that the World Day of the Poor would continue, he calls attention to the structural causes of poverty, urging Christians to enact policy changes that address food insecurity, the lack of healthcare, and inadequate education: “It is my hope, then, that this Jubilee Year will encourage the development of policies aimed at combatting forms of poverty both old and new, as well as implementing new initiatives to support and assist the poorest of the poor.”4 While less inclined toward larger-than-life symbolic actions than his predecessor, Pope Leo seems committed to entering the challenging terrain of systemic reform.
This focus recalls the words often attributed to Brazilian Archbishop Hélder Câmara, who observed, “When I feed the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist.” In highlighting structural injustice and expressing hope for policy change, Pope Leo risks similar criticism, yet this is precisely the kind of moral courage our time demands. Will we, too, go beyond charity to advocate for policies that transform lives?
The Roman Catholic Church is clearly leading the day’s celebration. Were this to become an ecumenical observance, I believe my denomination, the Episcopal Church, could offer a unique and needed perspective.
As an LGBTQIA+ inclusive denomination, we can name what researchers have called “queer poverty”, a term to describe the disproportionately high rates of poverty experienced by LGBTQIA+ people, particularly transgender individuals and LGBTQIA+ people of color, both in the United States and around the world. According to a 2019 study by the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law, one in five LGBTQIA+ people in the U.S. live below the poverty line, compared to about one in six cisgender, straight people (21.6% vs. 15.7%). The disparities are even more striking among transgender people and cisgender bisexual women, nearly one in three (29.4%) of whom live in poverty.5 The Williams Institute’s research also shows that LGBTQIA+ people living in rural areas face even greater economic challenges with 26% living in poverty compared to about 16% of their cisgender, straight neighbors.6
A follow-up Williams Institute study, Pathways into Poverty (2020), helps explain why these disparities persist. Drawing on interviews with LGBTQIA+ adults living with economic insecurity, researchers found that childhood poverty, anti-LGBTQ bias in families and workplaces, and a lack of community support were all recurring factors leading to poverty.7 Many respondents described being pushed out of their homes as teenagers after coming out, or being denied job opportunities because of their gender identity or expression. For transgender and gender nonbinary participants in particular, discrimination in hiring and barriers to stable employment were among the strongest predictors of ongoing economic insecurity. Racial inequity also compounded these patterns: over 80% of Black, Latino, and Indigenous LGBTQIA+ respondents reported experiencing poverty as children, compared to about half of white and Asian participants.
This focus recalls the words often attributed to Brazilian Archbishop Hélder Câmara, who observed, “When I feed the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist.”
This research underscores what faith communities like ours know through lived experience: discrimination (including religiously-based discrimination) is a direct contributor to homelessness, family estrangement, and lifelong poverty among queer and trans people. When churches exclude or condemn LGBTQIA+ youth, they often set in motion a chain of economic struggles that can last for decades. (While the Episcopal Church in America has made significant strides towards removing such exclusion from our denomination’s policies and practices, it would be foolish of me to pretend that the larger Anglican Communion is not still mired in internal conflict.)
As followers of Jesus, who identified himself with “the least of these,” we are called to recognize how sexual orientation and gender identity often determine who becomes “the least” in our midst. To be a truly inclusive church means not only welcoming queer people into our pews but also standing beside them in the struggle for housing, healthcare, and economic dignity.
I believe the World Day of the Poor offers congregations and denominations a chance to act in ways true to their own traditions. Jesus’ identification with the poor is at the heart of the Gospel, and this observance invites us to rediscover that truth together.
If we were to join hands across traditions, this day could become a sign of hope in a divided world. It would remind us that empathy and compassion for the most vulnerable is not weakness but the strength of Christ at work among us, and that love for the poor is not optional but rather central to our faith.
1 Zachary Wolf, “Elon Musk wants to save Western civilization from empathy,” CNN, March 5, 2025, https://www.cnn.com/2025/03/05/politics/elon-musk-rogan-interview-empathy-doge .
2 Tiffany Stanley, “Is Empathy a Sin? Some Conservative Christians Argue It Can Be,” PBS NewsHour (Associated Press), August 21, 2025, https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/is-empathy-a-sin-some-conservative-christians-argue-it-can-be.
3 Pope Leo XIV, “Message of the Holy Father for the 9th World Day of the Poor (13 June 2025),” The Holy See, June 13, 2025, https://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiv/en/messages/poor/documents/20250613-messaggio-giornata-poveri.html.
4 Ibid.
5 M.V. Lee Badgett, Bianca D.M. Wilson, and Soon Kyu Choi, “One in Five LGBT People Live in Poverty,” Williams Institute, UCLA School of Law, October 22, 2019, https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/press/us-lgbt-poverty-press-release/
6 Ibid.
7 Institute, UCLA School of Law, September 2020, https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/publications/pathways-into-poverty/.
