- 20 March, 2026
Vatican, March 20, 2026: Ten years after its publication, Pope Leo XIV has praised the “valuable teachings” of Amoris Laetitia and convoked presidents of Bishops’ Conferences to Rome in October 2026 for a meeting to reflect on ways to proclaim the Gospel to families in today’s context.
By Joseph Tulloch & Devin Watkins
A decade earlier, Pope Francis published Amoris Laetitia, the Apostolic Exhortation on “love in the family,” inspired by the Synods of Bishops of 2014 and 2015.
In a letter issued on Wednesday, March 19, Pope Leo XIV described the document as a “luminous message of hope regarding conjugal love and family life."
The 2016 Exhortation, he wrote, “encouraged reflection and pastoral conversion in the Church,” and “offers valuable teachings that we must continue to examine today.”
Meeting scheduled for October
In his letter, Pope Leo XIV observed that the present age is marked by “rapid changes,” including those affecting the family.
In response to these developments, he announced his decision to convene a meeting of the presidents of Bishops’ Conferences in Rome in October 2026.
According to the Pope, the gathering will offer an opportunity “to proceed, in mutual listening, to a synodal discernment on the steps to be taken in order to proclaim the Gospel to families today, in light of Amoris Laetitia and taking into account what is currently being done in the local Churches.”
New pastoral methods
In his letter, Pope Leo XIV referred to Amoris Laetitia as one of two Apostolic Exhortations since the Second Vatican Council that have “strengthened the Church’s doctrinal and pastoral commitment” to the service of families—the other being Familiaris Consortio by Pope John Paul II.
Pope Leo XIV wrote that Pope Francis had recognised that “anthropological and cultural changes” affecting the family required “mutual listening” within the people of God. This understanding led him to convoke the Synods of Bishops on the family and ultimately to publish Amoris Laetitia.
He further noted that Pope Francis understood that “it is not possible to speak about the family without engaging families themselves, listening to their joys and their hopes, their sorrows and their anguish.”
The Pope expressed gratitude to God for “the stimulus that has encouraged reflection and pastoral conversion in the Church.”
He added that the family constitutes the foundation of society, serving as a “school for human enrichment,” quoting the document Gaudium et Spes.
“Through the sacrament of marriage, Christian spouses form a kind of ‘domestic church,’ whose role is essential for teaching and transmitting the faith,” he said.
At the same time, he noted that significant societal changes over recent decades prompted Pope Francis to encourage the 2015 Synod of Bishops to listen attentively to the Holy Spirit and to the experiences of families—their hopes, joys, sorrows, and anguish.
Proclaiming Gospel of the family to younger generations
Pope Leo XIV stated that Amoris Laetitia provides valuable insights into the biblical hope of God’s loving and merciful presence amid family crises; the call for marriage to remain life-giving within the family; and the need for contemporary pastoral approaches that assist parents in educating their children and deepening spirituality within family life.
He urged the Church to discover new ways to “evoke the beauty of the vocation to marriage precisely in the recognition of fragility,” in order to further the mission of proclaiming the Gospel of the family to younger generations.
“We must also support families, especially those suffering from the many forms of poverty and violence present in contemporary society,” he said.
Pope Leo XIV concluded his letter on Amoris Laetitia by calling on the Church to renew and deepen its commitment to the family, so that married couples may “fully live out their conjugal love, and that young people may feel attracted, within the Church, to the beauty of the vocation to marriage.”
Courtesy: Vatican News
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