Pope Leo criticizes profit-driven activism and vast wealth concentration, urging focus on the heart and God’s love amid modern frenzy and inequality.
Newsroom (17/12/2025 Gaudium Press ) Pope Leo XIV on Wednesday sharply condemned what he described as “out of control” large financial investments, warning that an attitude of activism centered solely on profit endangers human lives and the environment while leaving perpetrators ultimately unhappy.
Addressing pilgrims gathered in St. Peter’s Square for his weekly general audience on Dec. 17, the pope emphasized that the essence of a person lies not in their extensive activities but in their heart.
“The heart is the symbol of all our humanity, the sum of our thoughts, feelings and desires, the invisible center of ourselves,” he said, invoking Jesus’s words from the Gospel of Matthew: “For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.”
He continued: “It is therefore in the heart that true treasure is kept, not in earthly safes, not in large financial investments, which today more than ever before are out of control and unjustly concentrated at the bloody price of millions of human lives and the devastation of God’s creation.”
The pontiff urged reflection on this reality, noting that the rapid pace of modern life and endless activities carry “an increasing risk of dispersion, sometimes of despair, of meaninglessness, even in apparently successful people.”
Pope Leo’s remarks align with his longstanding criticism of global financial inequalities. He has previously decried bloated executive compensation in the technology sector and the widening income gap between CEOs and workers.
In his only exclusive papal interview to date — conducted with Crux correspondent Elise Ann Allen for the Spanish-language biography León XIV: ciudadano del mundo, misionero del siglo XXI — Leo linked societal polarization to a devaluation of human life, family, and community.
“The value of human life, of the family, and the value of society. If we lose the sense of those values, what matters anymore?” he asked.
He highlighted “the continuously wider gap between the income levels of the working class and the money that the wealthiest receive,” observing that CEOs who once earned four to six times more than workers now earn, by recent figures, as much as 600 times more.
In the July interview, Leo referenced reports that Elon Musk was on track to become the world’s first trillionaire. “What does that mean and what’s that about? If that is the only thing that has value anymore, then we’re in big trouble,” he said.
Such concerns are consistent with Pope Leo’s deep commitment to social justice. He chose his papal name in honor of Leo XIII, who addressed worker exploitation during the Industrial Revolution, and has drawn parallels to the current “revolution” driven by artificial intelligence.
During Wednesday’s audience, part of his ongoing jubilee catechesis on Jesus’s resurrection, Leo described the modern world as marked by “constant movement” and accelerating speed in pursuit of optimal results across fields.
Yet he promised that sharing in Christ’s victory over death brings true rest: “We will not be inactive, but we will enter into God’s repose, which is peace and joy.” Humanity, he added, can taste this now by slowing down and prioritizing what truly matters.
People today, he observed, are absorbed by myriad activities and responsibilities that fail to satisfy. Even Jesus lived a life of action, giving himself fully, but excessive “doing” risks becoming “a vortex that overwhelms us, takes away our serenity, and prevents us from living to the fullest what is truly important.”
The result, Leo warned, is fatigue and dissatisfaction: time wasted on practical matters that do not resolve life’s ultimate meaning.
“We are not machines, we have a heart; indeed, we can say that we are a heart,” he declared.
Quoting St. Augustine — “our hearts are restless until they rest in you” — the pope described this restlessness as evidence that the heart is purposefully oriented toward its ultimate destination: “the return home.”
True fulfillment, he stressed, comes not from possessing worldly goods but from the love of God, who is love itself, and this love must be shared.
God’s love on earth “can only be found by loving the neighbor we meet along the way: brothers and sisters in flesh and blood, whose presence stirs and questions our heart, calling it to open up and give itself.”
Attentiveness to others often requires slowing down, making eye contact, altering plans, or changing direction, he said. Such openness yields a joy “that never disappoints.”
“No one can live without a meaning that goes beyond the contingent, beyond what passes away,” Leo concluded. “The human heart cannot live without hope, without knowing that it is made for fullness, not for want.”
He assured the faithful: “The restless heart will not be disappointed, if it enters into the dynamism of the love for which it was created…in Christ it will continue to triumph in every death of daily life. This is Christian hope.”
- Raju Hasmukh with files from Crux Now
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