My dear Brothers in the Episcopate,
Dear families,
Dear brothers and sisters,

I wished to convene this meeting ten years after the publication of Amoris Laetitia, and I thank you for arranging your commitments so that we could spend these days together. I warmly thank the married couples and all those who have come to share something of their lives in Christ and who will take part in our conversations, as well as the experts and facilitators.

Allow me to begin by recalling the long and fruitful synodal and missionary journey that the Church has made in relation to marriage and the family, a journey that we are called to continue.

The family has always held an important place in the pastoral concern of the Successor of Peter and of the Bishops who assist him through their participation in the Synod of Bishops. The Synod of 1980 took up a desire already expressed by Pope John Paul I during his brief pontificate, eventually leading to Saint John Paul II’s Apostolic Exhortation Familiaris Consortio.

At the beginning of his own pontificate, Pope Francis once again placed the family at the heart of a synodal process, recognizing the need to continue the Church’s discernment in the face of profound changes affecting an area so closely linked to her mission in the world today. That journey led, ten years ago, to the Apostolic Exhortation Amoris Laetitia.

In this regard, the Church has continued along the path indicated by the Second Vatican Council. When the Fathers of the Council placed the dignity of marriage and the family at the beginning of the second part of Gaudium et Spes, they recognized that family life offers a privileged point of entry into the great cultural, economic, social and political questions of our time, including the work of promoting peace among peoples. The interdependence of these questions has become even more evident today, always under the light of God’s word: “‘God made them male and female.’ For this reason, a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife” (Mk 10:6-7). The family remains key to an approach that holds together the local and the global, guided by the search for a universal fraternity in Christ that the Gospel calls us to build with everyone. This history of more than half a century places upon our meeting a particular responsibility as Shepherds, as the synodal vocation of the whole Church continues to unfold.

Within this history, Amoris Laetitia marked an important stage, and the ten years since its publication have become part of the life of our particular Churches. During this time, the Apostolic Exhortation has been received in different cultures and pastoral contexts, accompanied the concrete lives of families and inspired initiatives and processes.

These are the ten years we now bring together before the Lord Jesus. With the guidance of the Holy Spirit, looking attentively at what has happened can help us recognize more deeply what Christ has been teaching his Church through these years.

The Acts of the Apostles offer us a beautiful image for what we are about to do. At the end of their missionary journey, Paul and Barnabas gathered the Church together and “related all that God had done with them” (Acts 14:27). Later, as they made their way to Jerusalem, they passed through Phoenicia and Samaria recounting what had happened in the mission, and their account brought great joy to the brothers and sisters. When they reached Jerusalem, they were welcomed by the Church, the Apostles and the elders, and once again “reported all that God had done with them” (15:4).

There is something of this movement in our own gathering. As I have said, the Church has spent these ten years receiving Amoris Laetitia and walking with families in very different circumstances.

We too bring stories of what God has done among us. They are stories gathered along the path of mission: stories of conversion, of unexpected fruit, and of the relationships God has woven within families as our communities have sought to accompany them, together with the difficulties we have faced, the questions that have emerged, and what we have learned along the way. They give us confidence as we begin our work together. Let us place them before the Lord, share them with one another, seeking to recognize what God has been doing among us and where his Spirit is leading the Church today.

In my message of March 19^th, on the tenth anniversary of Amoris Laetitia, I recalled that “there are, in fact, places and circumstances in which the Church ‘can become the salt of the earth’ only through the lay faithful and, in particular, through families.” Indeed, Amoris Laetitia invites us to take seriously this vocation and responsibility. Families themselves participate in the Church’s mission in the ordinary fabric of their lives, through love and fidelity, care and forgiveness, the education of children, their efforts in transmitting faith, attention to the elderly and the vulnerable, and the many ways in which they serve their communities and society. In all these ways, families bear witness to the Gospel and contribute to the life and the mission of the Church.

As Pastors, we have received the responsibility, in season and out of season, of proclaiming the beauty of God’s plan for marriage and the family and his call for love and tenderness. This challenges us to accompany people as they seek to live their vocation in the concrete circumstances of their lives.

This ministry also places us in a school of listening. The wisdom of the People of God reaches us through our common faith, which enlightens all families, including situations marked by difficulties, loneliness and at times even apparent failure. The Lord himself patiently teaches us when we take the time to listen, and we certainly have much to learn from families.

Their lives also place before us questions that deserve to be faced with courage. In many contexts, 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. Economic insecurity, migration, violence, loneliness and other forms of emotional fragility also shape the choices people make and the possibilities they can imagine for their future.

These realities raise a number of questions that we must face with courage. What are people truly seeking beneath these cultural changes? What do their joys and hopes, griefs and anxieties reveal to us? Where do our pastoral language and practices succeed in opening a path, and where do they fail to touch people’s hearts or assist their efforts to do what is good? What is the lived experience of families teaching us — an experience from which we have not yet fully learned? What can we offer as formation for healthy and holy family life? In particular, what can we learn from parents as they seek to accompany their children and young people in such contexts?

Fragility deserves special attention, for it can profoundly shape the way people see themselves, their future, and even their relationship with God and with the Church. The experience of fragility raises the question of whether we are able to remain close to one another when life no longer corresponds to what had been hoped for, and whether we can recognize the work of grace even in situations marked by limits, wounds and apparent failure.

In this respect too, the experience of families has something to teach everyone, since fragility belongs to our common human condition and therefore also to the life of the Church. We all know the gap between the good we desire and what we are able to live. We need grace, forgiveness and new beginnings to accomplish God’s will, and we learn that fidelity is itself a grace to be received and a path to be gradually renewed, often through trial. Recognizing this shared challenge should shape the way we accompany one another in the Church. What kind of Church, then, do people encounter precisely when they are most fragile? Do our communities help them discover that they still have a place, a responsibility and gifts to offer? Can the truth we proclaim be encountered through the patience, closeness and mercy of our pastoral presence? How can we announce to them the fullness of the Gospel’s teaching about the family?

During these days, I invite you to give such questions their full weight. The Holy Spirit often speaks through the very situations that challenge us, and enlightens us that we may discover how God’s mercy and the salvific grace of Christ can reach our families today, particularly in their weakness and resilience, in their hopes and disappointments, in their longing for communion and their search for meaning. Our task, therefore, is not only to interpret these realities but to let them question us and motivate our pastoral responsibility, so that the Church may find renewed ways of proclaiming the Gospel, offering sacramental graces, accompanying families, and making visible the tenderness with which Christ continues to walk among his people.

May our dialogue with one another be marked by the evangelical freedom we see in the Acts of the Apostles. We can share what has brought joy in our Churches, what has challenged us and what questions have emerged more clearly through experience. Moreover, the diversity of the situations from which we come can become a gift for the discernment of the whole Church.

The Thematic Framework prepared for this meeting is meant to keep the breadth of Amoris Laetitia before us and to bring the Apostolic Exhortation into conversation with what our Churches have experienced during these past ten years. Let us draw inspiration from the richness of Christ’s word and the Church’s tradition. The program has been made public so that the People of God may accompany our work through prayer and synodal reflection.

For our part, listening to one another, allowing what we hear to resonate within us, and remaining attentive to the promptings of the Holy Spirit can awaken the pastoral creativity we need in the face of new questions.

This is why our common retreat this evening, and the prayer with which we will begin each day, are at the heart of our work. I ask the Lord to help us gather together the fruits that Amoris Laetitia has borne in our local Churches, so that they may nourish the whole Church.

I hope that, through the many stories you bring from your Churches and from different cultural contexts, a shared narrative of these ten years may gradually take shape, one marked by joy and hope, and that will enable us to face honestly the trials and difficulties that remain. This will nourish the pastoral discernment of the Episcopal Conferences and the hierarchical structures of the Eastern Churches. It will likewise help the local Churches recognize new paths, and draw all the baptized more deeply into the Church’s synodal journey. I would also ask that we all preserve the discretion and confidentiality that this time of listening and discernment requires.

May the Lord give us the freedom to listen to one another, the wisdom to recognize his work among his people, and the courage to follow where he leads us, so that, each day, the Gospel may become ever more fully good news for families throughout the world. Thank you.