VATICAN: Pope Convenes October Meeting with Bishops on Family Life
Sr. Jecinter Antoinette Okoth, FSSA
On the Solemnity of Saint Joseph Thursday, March 19, the same feast day on which the Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Amoris Laetitia was originally released ten years ago, Pope Leo XIV has called on presidents of Episcopal Conferences from around the world to gather at the Vatican in October for a synodal discernment on how the Church should proclaim the Gospel to families in the modern era.
The Amoris Laetitia, which translates as ‘The Joy of Love’, highlights the need for compassionate pastoral care and inclusion of cultural and social contexts in living out love within the family.
In his anniversary message, the Holy Father expressed the urgency of the meeting because of the “rapid changes in contemporary society which continue to place enormous pressure on families, making pastoral attention more critical now than it was a decade ago.
The gathering, he explained, will draw on the teachings of Amoris Laetitia. It will also be a time to take stock of what local Churches around the world are currently doing in family ministry.
“Our era is marked by rapid changes which make it necessary, even more than ten years ago, to give particular pastoral attention to families,” the Pope wrote, noting that families carry the responsibility of participating in the Church’s mission of proclaiming and witnessing to the Gospel.
The October gathering is expected to be a moment of “mutual listening” among the Bishops. Rather than the top-down agenda, the meeting aims to discern concrete steps that local Churches can take in proclaiming the Gospel of the family in ways that are responsive to the realities people face today.
The Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation, which will guide the October reflections, was itself the fruit of three years of synodal discernment under Pope Francis, enriched by the Jubilee Year of Mercy. The document drew on a long tradition of Church teaching rooted in the Second Vatican Council, which described the family as “the basis of society” and “a school for human enrichment,” and which, through the sacrament of marriage, saw Christian spouses forming a kind of “domestic church.”
In his message, the Pope notes that the exhortation builds on an earlier landmark document, Familiaris Consortio, on the role of the Christian family in the modern world.
The key highlight of the document’s anniversary is fragility, not as a weakness to be overcome but as an intrinsic dimension of human love and faith. Referencing remarks he made to young people gathered at Tor Vergata during the Jubilee of Hope, the Pope said that fragility is “part of the marvel of creation, and that human beings are made not for a static existence but for one constantly renewed through the gift of self in love.”
The Holy Father expressed gratitude to the many pastors, pastoral workers, associations of the faithful, and ecclesial movements engaged in family ministry, and acknowledged their quiet but vital work of accompanying families through hardship.
He further appealed for the need to support families suffering from poverty and violence, challenges that have only deepened over the years.
