Editorials - Looking at the world from under the table
by Luigino Bruni
published in Avvenire on 11/16/2025
World Day of the Poor, established in 2017 by Pope Francis, does not coincide with the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty established by the UN in 1992, which is celebrated on October 17. They are similar and have much in common, but there is a big difference between the two days, represented by the first beatitude of the Gospel: ‘Blessed are the poor’. That is why, when in 1987 Father Joseph Wresinski, founder of the ATD Fourth World Movement, launched the initiative that the UN would adopt five years later, he evangelically called it the ‘World Day for the Eradication of Poverty’. Poverty is not just misery, and the poor are not just misery. Many poor people are also in misery, but not all of them, and not all poverty and not all poor people should be eliminated, because if we eliminated all those who freely choose poverty, the earth would become truly too miserable.
This year, Pope Leo chose as his title: “You are my hope, my Lord” (Psalm 71:5). If we are honest, we must admit that we find it very difficult to celebrate the day of the poor and their hope, which is not in vain, because almost all of us, sitting on the comfortable sofas of our warm homes, have lost touch with the truly poor. In order to talk about and then celebrate a day of the poor, we should first get to know the poor in the flesh, be friends with some of them, enter their homes, shacks or non-homes, and perhaps stay there for a while. We should listen to them, let them speak, and recognize them—as the friends of ATD Fourth World do—with dignity of thought and words. All reports, studies, statistics, books, conferences, actions, and policies on poverty are produced by non-poor people, by experts who almost always talk about a continent they have never been to and know only from hearsay. We should supplement these reports and studies, which are often (though not always) useful, with different reports and studies, those that come from people who are inside the poverty that is described by those outside it. ‘Reality is superior to the idea’, a phrase very dear to Pope Francis, always applies, but especially when dealing with misery and unchosen poverty, where too often the idea of poverty prevails over the reality of poverty.
On this day, we should finally give the floor to the truly poor, listen to their point of view on their poverty, and let them tell us in their own words which aspects of their poverty they would like to eliminate and which they would not. If we did so, we would see something very different. It would be, for example, something Christian and prophetic if, at least in view of this day, we set up a commission composed exclusively or predominantly of poor people to prepare the first draft of Pope Leo's message and the introduction to the Caritas Report. We would learn to look at our world by standing with Lazarus under the table of the rich man, because the perspective of the poor on the world is essential even for those who are not poor or are no longer poor. The poor must not remain only the object of studies, words, actions, and prayers; they can become the subjects: we will see other studies, other actions, other prayers.
Perhaps we do not do this because, even in the Church, the truly poor frighten us; they remind us of a dark part of our lives that we do not want to see, and so instead of truly encountering them, we prefer to talk about the poor and give them alms. If, on the other hand, we really knew today's Lazaruses and sat down next to them, from that low vantage point we would see things that messages and reports cannot see by imagining poverty and looking at phenomena, data, and traces of poverty without seeing the poor, or seeing them only occasionally or at certain moments—for example, when they ask for help. But the “poor” (if we really want to call them that, which only says something about these people) do not just ask for help, they do many other things, some of them beautiful: they fall in love, sometimes they help others, they still know how to bring children into the world, they endure (like Job) our words and glances at them, and they often still know how to celebrate.
The big problem with ‘aid’ to the poor has to do with the issue of competence. Those who deal with it, almost always in perfect good faith, almost never have the necessary expertise on poverty. Because the most important expertise, in all areas (including the market), is that which arises from so-called tacit knowledge, i.e., that dimension of uncodified knowledge that cannot be learned in school or in master's programs. Tacit knowledge-competence is in fact that which is found only in the minds and souls of people who find themselves in that specific situation, and which only they possess. It is the expertise to be able to live on two dollars a day, to prepare a meal with almost nothing, to truly know what a companion (cum-panis) is, what trust (fides: corda) is, what charity is (that which is dear, and therefore valuable), how not to freeze to death without radiators and stoves, and even to intuit something of what the most scandalous and prophetic phrase in the Bible means: “Blessed are the poor, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Luke 6:20).
We could also express all this with the term ‘subsidiarity’, a great principle at the heart of our democracy. Any help and any words about poverty must start from those who are inside the problem, from what they already know and are, from their savoir faire, and then act only as a second step. “Only you can do it, but you cannot do it alone,” Bishop Giancarlo Bregantini taught me many years ago, a perfect summary of this evangelical subsidiarity.
This day, then, should be the right day to get to know and appreciate more the truly poor, who need many things, we know, but who first need friendship and esteem, because it is the lack of esteem that is the real poverty of the poor, even within the Church that does so much for them. Especially today, when meritocratic religion is succeeding in convincing us that the poor are not only destitute but also guilty of their poverty. Happy Day of the Poor to everyone, but first and foremost to the poor.