January 20, 2016 – Excerpted from Put Out Into The Deep, Bishop DiMarzio’s column in The Tablet:

My dear brothers and sisters in the Lord,

January has been designated as Poverty Awareness Month by many organizations. The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops joins with the Catholic Campaign for Human Development in calling attention to the issue of poverty, especially in our own country.

We are following the example of our Holy Father, Pope Francis, who in his encyclical, The Joy of the Gospel, Evangelii Gaudium, clearly stated what he said at the beginning of his pontificate, “I want a Church which is poor for the poor.”

This seemingly radical statement has many implications. If the Church is to serve the poor, then the Church itself must certainly act as the poor do, meaning that it must be dependent on the providence of God and not rely on its own resources. The poor necessarily are dependent on others for the basic necessities of life. There is no special charism that the poor have to be able to bear the burden of their poverty.

Read the full text of the Bishop’s column on The Tablet website.