A poor people of God for the poor in the world?

The reflections that have been compiled in this book are the result of study days that the Chair for the Theology of the People of God at the Pontifical Lateran University, Rome, held from September 30 to October 3, 2013. The topic was: "A Poor People of God for the Poor in the World. Pope Francis' Challenge." In the exhortation Evangelii gaudium, published two months later, Pope Francis introduced his ideas precisely: "I want a Church which is poor and for the poor." The study days are supposed to serve this task, and his matter of concern has been taken up in the texts that we publish here. A special character was given to the "study days" by the participation of the two Israeli lecturers, George Y. Kohler and Hanoch Ben-Pazi. Both are not only experts in Jewish thinking of the Middle Ages and of the 19th and 20th century, but they also live in the midst of this tradition. Their lectures and their presence broadened the topic of the question about the Church to include the whole people of God. From the dogmatic, church-historical and exegetic points of view, Ludwig Weimer, Hans Hubert Klein, and Achim Buckenmaier contribute the aspects that have become more and more clear in the development of the "theology of the people of God" in the course of more than 50 years. These aspects now seemed helpful in clarifying the question about poverty.