The recent presentation of the IX FOESSA Report by Cáritas to Sánchez is no small matter. Not only because of the report’s content—which describes with data a socially fractured Spain—but also because of the accompanying political gesture: a photograph, a speech, and a privileged dialogue with an Executive whose direct responsibility in many of those fractures is hard to ignore.
Cáritas analyzing poverty, exclusion, and the structural difficulties faced by broad segments of the population is part of its historical mission. No one disputes the value of the diagnosis or the work of thousands of volunteers who, in silence, support the most vulnerable. The problem arises when denunciation is replaced by language that seems to legitimize policies that have precisely contributed to worsening the ills described.
The report acknowledges macroeconomic improvements and advances such as the Minimum Vital Income, but it evades an essential question: why, after years of expanding public spending and social engineering, does exclusion continue to affect millions of people, especially children and young people? Why is housing more inaccessible than ever today? Why does precariousness become chronic? Pointing out the symptoms without seriously questioning the causes is equivalent to stopping halfway.
Particularly worrying is the insistence on a massive regularization of immigrants presented as an almost automatic solution. Turning extraordinary regularization into the moral axis of the discourse not only ignores its economic and social effects—downward pressure on wages, greater precariousness, strain on public services, increased insecurity—but also blurs the very concept of Christian charity. Charity does not consist of endorsing policies that disorder coexistence nor assuming as inevitable decisions that gravely harm the common good.
The Church’s social doctrine speaks of human dignity, yes, but also of justice, subsidiarity, political responsibility, and the primacy of the common good. Defending the poor does not imply aligning with a specific ideological project or becoming a transmission belt for a government. When ecclesial action is perceived as complacent with power, it loses moral authority and prophetic credibility.
Spain needs profound responses, not slogans. It needs strong families, dignified employment, effective border control, a realistic housing policy, and an economy that does not rely on precariousness or permanent dependence on the State. And above all, it needs a Church that accompanies the poor without confusing itself with those who govern poorly.
Christian charity cannot be separated from justice or the common good. Let us judge by the fruits.