Pope Leo’s first encyclical Dilexit Te (He loved you) is a profound call for the Church to embody Christ’s love in a fractured world. This apostolic exhortation urges believers to reach the marginalized with tangible hope, a message that resonates powerfully in India, where gleaming cities rise beside sprawling slums and staggering inequality defines daily life.
The top 1% controls over 40% of the nation’s wealth while the bottom half survives on just 3%, according to Oxfam’s 2023 report, Survival of the Richest. Scholars call this a “billionaire raj,” where a tiny elite thrives while millions struggle. Against this backdrop, the Indian Church faces a question: How can it translate Dilexit Te’s vision of love into meaningful action?
The numbers tell a sobering story. In districts like Alirajpur in Madhya Pradesh and Shravasti in Uttar Pradesh, over 70% of residents face multidimensional poverty, lacking clean water, healthcare, and education, per NITI Aayog’s 2021 index.
A 2024 household survey reveals that 81% of Indians, more than 1.1 billion people, survive on less than 200 rupees daily, far below what constitutes dignified living. While extreme poverty has fallen to 5.75% by World Bank estimates, the widening income gap threatens India’s Sustainable Development Goals, particularly those targeting hunger and inequality by 2030. Economist Thomas Piketty argues that this inequality remains India’s greatest obstacle to becoming a developed nation, stifling growth and fueling despair.
The Indian Church, with its 28 million members, has historically understood its mission as serving the forgotten rather than simply preaching to them. Caritas India, the Catholic Church’s outreach arm since 1962, touches over 10 million lives annually through programs in health, education, and livelihoods. In Alirajpur, where literacy hovers at 37%, Caritas has established mobile clinics and schools that have raised enrollment by 40% since 2020. These efforts give Bhil tribal children opportunities beyond mere survival. Their DISHA initiative has taught sustainable farming to 50,000 tribal families, reducing debt and hunger while advancing the goal of zero hunger.
Protestant communities contribute equally vital work. The Church of North India operates over 5,000 schools and 500 hospitals, serving 2 million patients yearly, often providing care for free. In Uttar Pradesh’s Shravasti, church-led feeding programs have cut child stunting by 25% in targeted villages since 2020. These efforts are deeply personal. Pastors break bread with families, catechists travel to remote hamlets, building trust where government systems fail. This is Dilexit Te in action: love that meets people exactly where they are.
The Church’s unique strength lies in its intimate connection with the marginalized. Dalits and Adivasis comprise 70% of Indian Christians, making the Church a natural advocate for these communities.
Christian Aid’s vocational training programs have empowered 100,000 Dalit women into entrepreneurship since 2015, challenging the “billionaire raj” by fostering economic dignity at the grassroots level. Aid to the Church in Need funds 500 projects yearly, from rebuilding homes after disasters to training clergy who champion social justice. This work echoes Dr. B.R. Ambedkar’s vision of equality, blending faith with social transformation.
Significant challenges remain. Over 700 attacks on Christians in 2023 alone threaten this vital work. Resources are chronically scarce, and navigating India’s religious diversity requires sensitivity and wisdom. Yet the Church’s grassroots networks offer genuine hope.
Small Christian communities foster resilience in forgotten corners of the nation. In Jhabua, church cooperatives have transformed barren fields into productive farms that now fund wells and schools. This is love that builds rather than merely relieves.
Dilexit Te calls the Church to be a bridge, not a savior. It reminds believers to transform statistics into stories, like the Bahraich widow whose daughter reached college through a church scholarship, breaking her family’s cycle of poverty.
India needs more than policy reforms to meet its Sustainable Development Goals; it needs compassion that genuinely transforms lives. The Indian Church can amplify voiceless communities, partner with organizations working toward change, and advocate for fairer wealth distribution.
In a land of stark paradoxes, the Church, guided by Dilexit Te’s vision of love, can weave threads of hope into reality, one life, one village, one community at a time.
