World Day of the Poor

Hands holding a bowl

"The gravest form of poverty is not to know God." - Pope Leo XIV

Sunday, November 16, 2025, is the World Day of the Poor, a day established by Pope Francis in 2017 for Catholics to "reflect on how poverty is at the very heart of the Gospel." The theme for 2025 is "You are my hope" (Ps 71:5).

"Amid life's trials, our hope is inspired by the firm and reassuring certainty of God's love, poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit," wrote Pope Leo XIV in his message for the day. "The living God is in fact 'the God of hope' (Rom 15:13), and Christ, by his death and resurrection, has himself become 'our hope.'" (1 Tim 1:1).

Pope Leo said that the poor "can be witnesses to a strong and steadfast hope, precisely because they embody it in the midst of uncertainty, poverty, instability, and marginalization," not being able to "rely on the security of power and posessions."

Why Pope Francis established the day in 2017

After the Year of Mercy, Pope Francis said he wanted to set aside a day so that, throughout the world, Christian communities could become even greater signs of Christ's charity for those in need. We are called, Pope Francis wrote in his first World Day of the Poor message, "to draw near to the poor, to encounter them, to meet their gaze, to embrace them, and to let them feel the warmth of love that breaks through their solitude. Their outstretched hand is also an invitation to step out of our certainties and comforts, and to acknowledge the value of poverty in itself."

The pope said that for Christ's disciples, "poverty is, above all, a call to follow Jesus in his own poverty," and he asked Catholics to take as their example Saint Francis of Assisi, who kept his gaze fixed on Christ, allowing him to see and serve the poor.

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