Use wealth to help people, not destroy them, pope says

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Pope Leo XIV prayed that the leaders of nations would use money and resources to promote the common good rather than using "wealth against humanity" by "turning it into weapons that destroy peoples or monopolies that humiliate workers."

"Whoever serves God becomes free from wealth; but whoever serves wealth remains its slave," the pope said Sept. 21 in his homily in the Vatican's parish Church of St. Anne.

"Whoever seeks justice transforms wealth into the common good," the pope said, and "whoever seeks domination turns the common good into prey for their own greed."

The day's Gospel reading was Jesus' parable of the dishonest steward from Luke 16:1-13. It ends with Jesus saying, "No servant can serve two masters. He will either hate one and love the other or be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and mammon."

At both the morning Mass in the small church located just inside Vatican City State and in his midday Angelus address with thousands of pilgrims and visitors in St. Peter's Square, Pope Leo urged Catholics to consider their relationship to money and material goods.

He also used his Angelus address to thank Catholic organizations holding prayer vigils for peace and raising money for humanitarian aid to Gaza.

"I appreciate your initiative and many others throughout the Church that express closeness to our brothers and sisters who are suffering in that tormented land," Pope Leo said. "Together with you and with the pastors of the churches in the Holy Land, I repeat: There is no future based on violence, forced exile or revenge. The people need peace; those who truly love them work for peace."

A group of people in the square were holding a colorful banner that said, in Italian, "Peace for Gaza." The pope's call for an end to the violence was met with applause.

At the Mass earlier in the Church of St. Anne, staffed by his Augustinian confreres, the pope prayed that parishioners would "persevere with hope in a time seriously threatened by war."

"Entire peoples today are being crushed by violence -- and even more so by a shameless indifference that abandons them to a fate of misery," the pope told parishioners. "Faced with these tragedies, we do not want to be resigned, but to proclaim in word and deed that Jesus is the savior of the world, the one who delivers us from all evil."

Pope Leo prayed that the Holy Spirit would convert hearts "so that, nourished by the Eucharist -- the church's supreme treasure -- we may become witnesses of charity and peace."

Later, in his Angelus address, the pope said Jesus' parable "invites us to ask ourselves: How are we managing the material goods, the resources of the earth and our very lives that God has entrusted to us?"

Each person must make a choice, he said. "We can follow the way of selfishness, placing wealth above all else and thinking only of ourselves. But this isolates us from others and spreads the poison of competition, which often fuels conflict."

On the other hand, he said, "we can recognize everything we have as a gift from God, to be managed and used as an instrument for sharing -- to create networks of friendship and solidarity, to work for the common good and to build a world that is more just, equitable and fraternal."