Fragility belongs to everyone. This is the interpretive key with which the Vatican meeting marking ten years of Amoris laetitia, held from 7 to 14 October, drew to a close. At the final briefing, Msgr Philippe Bordeyne, President of the Pontifical John Paul II Theological Institute for Marriage and Family Sciences and coordinator of the experts, explained that the synthesis report, in the wake of Magnifica humanitas, speaks of fragility as the “common condition” of humanity: “It is not a label to be placed on a person” in order to exclude them from the Christian community. The text, unanimously approved by the commission and discussed on the afternoon of 14 October, will now be handed to Leo XIV, who has asked to receive it before any decision is taken.
The Pope’s message and homily
The Pope, in hospital at the Gemelli following lung surgery on 13 October, responded with a few lines read at the end of the proceedings to the message in which the participants had expressed their “closeness” and “affection”: “As you know, I have been unable to be among you during these days”. He described their “sharing of experiences and attentive listening” as “a gift to the whole Church”, and made a commitment: “I will read the fruits of your work and discussions, and offer my reflections in due course”. Earlier that morning, in St Peter’s Square, Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle read the homily prepared by the Pope, which centres on love lived within the family, “with its moments of struggle, mistakes and failures”, since “for every couple, marriage preparation begins at birth”. The warning was clear: “May families never again experience violence, rejection and division”. The text calls on the faithful to “grow as a Church that is a ‘family of families'” and to rediscover the family as “a privileged place of prayer”, in the certainty that “as wounded as the family may be, it can always grow beginning with love”.
Accompanying before judging
The tone had been set on 7 October in the Paul VI Hall by the Pope’s question: “What kind of Church, then, do people encounter precisely when they are most fragile?” In the days that followed, Fr Giacomo Costa SJ, in charge of the meeting’s methodology, gave voice to the issues that emerged, ranging from “too many pressures on families” to the difficulties facing young people: “It is difficult to promise each other a future when you do not know whether you will have a job or a home”. On married couples, he observed: “On the wedding day, we know where to find the couple. A year later, where are we?” Cardinal Gérald Cyprien Lacroix, Archbishop of Québec, noted that the world has changed, “but not the need to love and be loved”. At the final briefing, Costa pointed to what keeps people away from Christian communities, “shame, fear of being judged, the feeling of not having a place in the Church”, and to the need for “timely intervention” in cases of violence and abuse, stressing that “mercy and truth are not opposing demands”. Ecclesiastical tribunals were also reconsidered from a pastoral perspective, starting with the accessibility of marriage nullity proceedings. Bordeyne outlined the report’s new section titles, beginning with “Together in a changing world”, and the new prominence of discernment, which now appears in the title of one section and was “accepted by everyone”.
Families as protagonists of mission
The Pope hopes that families “will always be active participants in the life and mission” of the local Churches. On 13 October, Cardinal Kevin Farrell, Prefect of the Dicastery for Laity, Family and Life, highlighted the “missionary dynamism inherent in conjugal love itself”. Among the recurring proposals, Costa reported, was that of “involving families in the formation of seminarians and priests”. For Archbishop Charles Scicluna of Malta, Amoris laetitia remains “a fresh document that needs to be rediscovered”, and not one to be read in isolation. Cardinal Luis Gerardo Cabrera Herrera, Archbishop of Guayaquil, identified four features of the family, “prayer, communion, formation and mission”, and proposed “establishing the ministry of marriage and the family”. Nigerian theologian Fr Stan Chu Ilo sees the emergence of a Church able to speak through listening, “a Church that stays with people’s wounds”, and finds in it the image of the Church as the family of God, so dear to Africa. Brazilian couple Solange and Alisson Schila said they had arrived in a Babel and were setting out again from a rebuilt Jerusalem. The closing session, entrusted to Farrell, was “a reopening”, as Costa put it: returning together to shared experience “can become a regular practice of pastoral life”.
