The Pope, in his address to judges the Church's highest court, warned that well-intentioned compassion, if not grounded in objective truth, can lead to relativizing the truth.
It's particularly relevant to us as you read this in a social media setting like X where Charity and Truth are often divorced and live in a vacuum.
Let's look at this through that lens, and I'll propose how it applies to us.
Pope Leo warned against a kind of compassion that is detached from truth. When pastoral concern replaces the duty to establish what is true, justice is not served, it's weakened.
Compassion comes from Truth, and it has to be guided by it. Often the Left ignores the Truth and their compassion becomes misguided and dangerous.
Life/Abortion, Transgender issues, Immigration issues, and more; all of these are "compassions" divorced from Truth and reality.
At the same time, the Pope cautioned against cold legalism which can forget a person's dignity, and can fail the gospel.
I said in a post a few days ago that conservatives are often all head/reason, sometimes to a fault (i.e. "cold legalism". Truth without charity makes the Truth lifeless, because it becomes loveless.
We see a need for this balance between Truth (or Justice) and Charity in the current immigration crisis where we appear to have the same strategies and approach to hardened criminal illegal migrants as we have to peaceful, working illegal migrants with no criminal record at all.
What's the middle ground? Where do Truth and Charity meet there? That's what the Holy Father was talking about.
Even though we aren't judges or canon lawyers, we have the same duty to the Truth (in Justice, Mercy, and Charity) as they do, and should receive the pope's words with openness.