Leo XIV gathers the Church on the family, ten years after Amoris laetitia

From Wednesday 7 to 14 October 2026, in the Paul VI Hall of the Vatican, a week-long meeting is being held behind closed doors on the family, the life of families today, and the vocation to marriage. One hundred and eighty-seven participants are taking part: the heads of the fifteen Eastern Catholic Churches, representatives of the world's one hundred and fifteen episcopal conferences (one hundred and eleven presidents and four delegates), twenty-two personal guests of the pope, some thirty cardinals, and couples drawn notably from Ghana, Brazil, the Philippines and France.

The meeting, announced by Leo XIV on 19 March, takes as its base text the apostolic exhortation Amoris laetitia, published ten years earlier on the family. The Dicastery for the Laity, the Family and Life and the General Secretariat of the Synod circulated a preparatory « thematic framework », addressed to the heads of the Eastern Churches and the presidents of the episcopal conferences. In his message, Leo XIV said he desired a « synodal discernment » on the steps to be taken to proclaim the Gospel to families today. On the eve of the proceedings, he addressed a letter urging the young to seek Catholic marriage.

What the Church has always taught of marriage

Marriage is not an institution whose contours men would fix according to the age. It is a sacrament instituted by Our Lord, and its first author is God himself. « Therefore now they are not two, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let no man put asunder » (St. Matthew, XIX, 6). From this word the Church holds her constant doctrine: the union of the baptized is one, and it is indissoluble.

The Council of Trent, in its twenty-fourth session, defined marriage as one of the seven sacraments and fixed its properties; the Catechism of the Council of Trent sets out its ends and its holiness, ordered to the procreation and education of children, to the mutual help of the spouses, and to the remedy of concupiscence. Leo XIII, in the encyclical Arcanum divinae sapientiae, recalled that the law of marriage belongs neither to the State nor to changing mores, but to God. Pius XI, in Casti connubii, condemned every doctrine that would claim to bend this law to the weaknesses of the age. On this point there is nothing to discern: the truth is fixed.

The measure

That the Church should attend to the concrete life of families, that she should seek the words to proclaim the Gospel to them, this has in every age been her duty. To urge the young to Christian marriage, as the letter sent on the eve of the meeting does, accords fully with the exaltation the tradition has always made of this sacrament, and we say so without reserve.

But the text chosen as the base for this work has, since its publication, been the object of a grave controversy, bearing notably on the discipline of the sacraments. And it is here that the distinction must hold: a « discernment » may bear on the means of the proclamation; it cannot bear on the law itself. The indissolubility of the bond and the conditions for a worthy reception of the Eucharist are not open questions to be reopened every ten years. They have been settled, and by an authority that does not revise itself.

The proceedings are held behind closed doors; we do not prejudge their conclusions, and we will refrain from attributing to an assembly what no act has decided. We recall only the standard: whatever departs from the received doctrine will be, in that very measure, a departure, whatever the intention that inspires it. For the faithful, the rule is ancient and simple: hold what has always been believed. No meeting, however numerous and however solemn, has received the power to undo what God has joined.

Sources. Gospel according to St. Matthew, XIX, 6 (Douay-Rheims, Vulgate); Council of Trent, twenty-fourth session (1563), on the sacrament of matrimony; Catechism of the Council of Trent (1566), on the sacrament of matrimony; Leo XIII, encyclical Arcanum divinae sapientiae (1880); Pius XI, encyclical Casti connubii (1930).