Pope Francis and the Catholic Worker on the Ascesis of Attention

Abstract

Pope Francis’s encyclical Fratelli tutti elevates some key themes of his papacy. Using the parable of the Good Samaritan as a framing narrative, Francis outlines an active, nonviolent style of politics and social engagement based on practices of attention and hospitality toward one’s neighbors. Francis refers to this mode of engagement as “social friendship.” Francis’s pastoral letters and homilies draw from the content and methodologies common to Latin American liberation theology, but many of his insights are mirrored in an Anglo-American context through the witness of the Catholic Worker movement. This paper looks to the Catholic Worker for a mode by which the Gospel of social friendship can be lived out through asceses of attention and hospitality to the unhoused. Social friendship leads one to responsible action, and universal membership in the Body of Christ calls into question the structures that oppress the vulnerable.