The article discusses the category of the option for the poor, by answering four key questions: 1) What is the option for the poor?; 2) Who are the poor?; 3) Why the option for the poor?; 4) How to opt? The category of the option for the poor emerged in Latin America at the turn of the 60s and 70s of the twentieth century, as the fruit of an audit of faith and the personal, communitarian, social and ecclesial life . The author defines the category according to the teaching of the bishops (Medellin and Puebla), to John Paul II and Latin-American theologians . He highlights the need for clarifying the meaning of poverty and the poor, specifically of the current theological understanding of these concepts . He then describes main theological reasons of the option for the poor: God’s plan of salvation; the theology of creation; human dignity; the mystery of sin; the phenomenon of poverty as a place of proving the fundamental statements about God and Jesus Christ; an ecclesiological significance of the option for the poor. In the last part of the paper the author quotes the Polish translation of the so-called The Pact of St. Domitilla Catacombs, which illustrates one of more promising ways of implementing that option in both personal and ecclesial life.

The Christian laity is called to the ministry of evangelization in the Church and for the Church. In this work, basic ecclesial communities play an important role, because they are forming disciples of Christ and preparing them to bear testimony to the Gos-pel in the world. The communities have been initiated in the Church of South America and are centres of evangelization as a true expression of ecclesial communion (ChL no. 26). They also express the preferential option of the Church for the poor, because they are often created by people deprived of fair access to material goods and live on the margins of society. In the activities of basic ecclesial communities, the poor evan-gelize themselves first, feeding on the Word of God, to make it a source of inspiration for life and action. At that time, the poor are becoming subjects of evangelization, when they recognize the proclamation of the Good News of salvation as their task, not only with words but also through the testimony of life. The transmission of the Gospel occurs in interpersonal encounters in which the attitude of believers in Christ urges people to adopt Christian values and imbue in them the culture created by them.

The paper is a biblical-theological study that attempts to describe social groups which can be regarded as the poor in the light of teaching of Jesus . The study is based on the following biblical texts: Mk 1:15; cf . Mt 4:17; Lu 4:43, then Lk 4:18-19, Lk 6:20 and Mt 5:3 and several others. The poor of the Gospels are the first recipients of the kingdom of God. According to the author the evangelical poor have many different faces and also poverty has many dimensions. The first of all is the material lack and need. There are many other categories of poor people, for example those excluded from their social and religious position: widows and children, the little ones, am ha’aretz. Another category of the poor are the sick and suffering, sinners and the outlawed, men with an unclean spirit. All those people were the recipients and bene-ficiaries of the kingdom of God to come.

Pope Francis often speaks about the new evangelization. He notices areas that need a special care of the Church. One of them is the problem of poverty. The Pope encou-rages all the faithful to engage in the transformation of this situation . It can be called a “throwaway culture” and a sign of real poverty of the whole society when people remain indifferent to the cause of the poor. It is one of the negative consequences of the culture of prosperity. The Pope also calls it a “globalisation of indifference” and calls on all people of the three states in the Church to care for those who are poor and abandoned and to act against poverty. In a particular way Francis addresses his appeal to the consecrated persons, encouraging them to contemplate the poor Jesus, to the consecration of their lives through a faithful fulfilment of their vow of poverty and to the apostolate among the poor and the marginalized . By means of such an attitude of men and women religious they would contribute to their own sanctification, to bearing witness to love to the poor before the world and at least partly they will help those in need among whom they live and serve.