VATICAN CITY — A highly-anticipated meeting of bishops on the family ended at the Vatican on Wednesday, but release of the gathering’s final report was postponed on account of Pope Leo XIV’s hospitalization and surgery.
The meeting marked the 10th anniversary of Pope Francis’ apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia and discussion focused on the legacy of that controversial document.
As organizers announced on Monday, since Leo XIV could not “listen” to the assembly of bishops and lay experts as he had originally planned, he said he would review the documentation and conclusions of the meeting following his convalescence. What happens next will then be up to him.
“I will read the fruits of your work and discussions, and offer my reflections in due course,” the pope said in a brief message to participants read on Oct. 14.
The Oct. 7–14 meeting — whose participants were mainly the presidents of the world’s bishops’ conferences — was organized in the same style as recent Synod on Synodality assemblies. Bishops and experts introduced the themes with speeches on the topic at hand, and small-group discussions alternated with plenary sessions.
While the themes for each session and keynotes have been made available online, plenary sessions and open interventions were held behind closed doors, and participants — abiding by Pope Leo’s call for “discretion and confidentiality” in his opening address — have declined to elaborate on the opinions expressed on various issues, especially the most controversial: the reception of holy Communion by divorced and civilly remarried Catholics.
The dominant discussion about Amoris Laetitia in the immediate aftermath of its publication and in the decade that followed was about the document’s “chapter 8,” about “irregular” relationships, and a footnote interpreted by some as giving access to Communion to divorced and civilly remarried people after a process of pastoral accompaniment and discernment.
Debate over Amoris Laetitia intensified after the bishops of the Buenos Aires Pastoral Region interpreted the document as allowing, following a process of accompanied pastoral discernment, access to the sacraments of reconciliation and the Eucharist for some Catholics who are divorced and civilly remarried.
Chapter 8 and ‘irregular situations‘
This topic was among those discussed at the meeting on Oct. 12, which focused on accompanying families in the difficulties of life.
Cardinal Kevin Farrell, whose Dicastery for the Laity, the Family, and Life co-organized the gathering with the synod office, opened discussions on Oct. 12 urging participants to truthfully share their lived experience “avoiding any spirit of controversy.”
Jesuit Father Giacomo Costa, a consulter of the synod office and a meeting organizer, did not go into detail about what was said during a briefing for journalists Oct. 14 but described discussing “sensitive issues on which there are still differing perspectives and assessments.”
The environment, he added, was “constructive” and people clearly desired to listen before judging: “The approach is not one of opposition,” Costa said. “Of course, there are also different emphases and sensibilities.”
He said participants shared stories about how people were able to reexamine their lives in the light of the Gospel and take steps toward conversion.
This led, the priest continued, “to an emphasis on the importance of formation — of forming consciences — and of … continuing to deepen this relationship between pastoral experience and theological reflection.”
Julie Hanlon Rubio, a professor of Christian Social Ethics at the Jesuit School of Theology of Santa Clara University in Berkeley, California, made one of the most explicit references to the controversial passages of Amoris Laetitia in her speech the same day.
“Though the document is best remembered for the controversial Chapter 8,” she said, “it also offered a positive vision of marriage designed to correct the abstraction and negativity that many still associate with Church teaching and a praxis of accompaniment that has yet to be fully realized.”
Quoting from the exhortation, paragraphs 296 and 297, she said: “Francis told us, ‘No one can be condemned forever! It is not the logic of the Gospel!’ and this logic should be extended to ‘everyone.’”
In a footnote to this part, she wrote: “Today this surely includes divorced persons, single parent families, blended families, cohabiting couples, and persons identifying as LGBTQ.”
Continuity in Church teaching
But Pope Leo himself appeared to have had a different agenda for discussions — choosing to move beyond the idea of listening and welcoming to focus more on how the Church can concretely help young people in today’s society enter into the sacrament in the first place.
He also pointed out continuity in the Church’s teaching on marriage and the family from St. Paul VI to Pope Francis.
The first day of the meeting both the Holy Father and Dominican Sister Helen Alford, who was entrusted with the assembly’s opening meditation, argued that Amoris Laetitia was consistent with the Church teaching and practice that came before it.
Like an earlier document on the family by St. John Paul II, Amoris Laetitia was an innovative response to the challenge of following the moral law “when social situations are turbulent and changing quickly,” Alford said.
Pope Leo’s opening remarks also underlined the reality of marriage today and that “a growing distance has emerged between the ways in which sex and intimacy are lived and the Christian vision of marriage.”
“Young people continue to long for love, fidelity, and belonging, yet many find it difficult to embrace how such a vision of love can take shape in their own lives or to believe that a lifelong commitment is the condition for reaching what they desire,” the pontiff continued.
Though he could not celebrate the meeting’s closing Mass on Oct. 14 as planned, Pope Leo’s prepared homily was read by substitute celebrant Cardinal Luis Tagle.
The pope’s homily recalled the love of the Lord, saying that “is the love that Amoris Laetitia invites us to make the foundation of our families” and inviting Catholics to teach young people preparing for marriage about the importance of the virtues, especially chastity.
“Marriage preparation programs conscientiously developed for this purpose in parishes and pastoral areas are commendable. Yet such courses alone are insufficient, for they must be preceded and supported by an education in love that accompanies a person’s growth from childhood,” he said.
“The values of openness to life and respect for life, from conception to natural death, are also rooted in this charity, which is fundamental to our existence and to our life together as human beings,” the pontiff added, recalling that “Pope Francis stressed that ‘no union that is temporary or closed to the transmission of life can ensure the future of society’ (Amoris Laetitia, 52).”
“The world has no future without strong families open to the gift of children and attentive to their education and growth.”
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