The proper understanding and prudent practice of religious poverty has probably never been easy in any age. It is of the very nature of religious poverty, because it has to do with material goods with which we cannot dispense absolutely and whose value is always relative to cultural situations, that it is always a provisional arrangement that has to be constantly reevaluated and readjusted.

Our own times are characterized by conditions that make the understanding and prudent practice of poverty even more difficult than in times past. The major difference between our own age and any previous one, in relation to poverty, is our global interdependence at the economic level and our awareness of it.