Dear brothers and sisters,

On 19 March 2016, Pope Francis offered the universal Church a luminous message of hope regarding conjugal love and family life, which was the fruit of three years of synodal discernment enriched by the Jubilee Year of Mercy: the Apostolic Exhortation Amoris Laetitia. On this tenth anniversary, we give thanks to the Lord for the stimulus that has encouraged reflection and pastoral conversion in the Church, and ask God for the courage to persevere on this path, always welcoming the Gospel anew in the joy of being able to proclaim it to all.

The Second Vatican Council taught that the family is “the basis of society,”[1] a gift from God and “a school for human enrichment.”[2] Through the sacrament of marriage, Christian spouses form a kind of “domestic church,”[3] whose role is essential for teaching and transmitting the faith. Since the Council, the two Apostolic Exhortations, Familiaris Consortio — issued by Saint John Paul II in 1981 — and Amoris Laetitia (AL), have both strengthened the Church’s doctrinal and pastoral commitment to the service of young people, married couples and families.

Recognizing that “anthropological and cultural changes” (AL 32) have become increasingly pronounced over the past thirty-five years, Pope Francis wanted to further engage the Church in the path of synodal discernment. His address on 17 October 2015, delivered during the XIV Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops on the family, called for “mutual listening” within the people of God: “all listening to the Holy Spirit, ‘the Spirit of truth’ (Jn 14:17), in order to know what he ‘says to the Churches’ (Rev 2:7).” He explained 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.”[4]

In gathering the fruits of synodal discernment, Amoris Laetitia offers valuable teachings that we must continue to examine today: the biblical hope of God’s loving and merciful presence, which allows us to live “love stories” even when navigating “family crises” (AL 8); the invitation to adopt “the gaze of Jesus” (AL 60) and tirelessly to encourage “the growth, strengthening and deepening of conjugal and family love” (AL 89); the call to appreciate that love in marriage “always gives life” (AL 165) and that it is ‘real’ precisely in its “limited and earthly” way (AL 113), as the mystery of the Incarnation teaches us. Pope Francis affirmed the need “for new pastoral methods” (AL 199) and for a better education of children (cf. AL chap. VII), while inviting the Church to accompany, discern and integrate fragility (cf. AL chap. VIII), overcoming a reductive conception of the norm, and to promote “the spirituality that unfolds in family life” (AL 313).

As I had the opportunity to say to the young people gathered at Tor Vergata during the Jubilee of Hope, fragility is “part of the marvel of creation… We are not made for a life where everything is taken for granted and static, but for an existence that is constantly renewed through gift of self in love.”[5]To serve the mission of proclaiming the Gospel of the family to younger generations, we must learn to evoke the beauty of the vocation to marriage precisely in the recognition of fragility, so as to reawaken “trust in God’s grace” (AL 36) and the Christian desire for holiness. We must also support families, especially those suffering from the many forms of poverty and violence present in contemporary society.

We thank the Lord for families who, despite difficulties and challenges, live “the spirituality of family love […] made up of thousands of small but real gestures” (AL 315). I also express my gratitude to the pastors, pastoral workers, Associations of the faithful and ecclesial Movements that are engaged in family ministry.

Our era is marked by rapid changes which make it necessary, even more than ten years ago, to give particular pastoral attention to families, to whom the Lord entrusts the task of participating in the Church’s mission of proclaiming and witnessing to the Gospel.[6] There are, in fact, places and circumstances in which the Church “can become the salt of the earth”[7] only through the lay faithful and, in particular, through families. For this reason, the Church’s commitment in this area must be renewed and deepened, so that those whom the Lord calls to marriage and family life can, in Christ, fully live out their conjugal love, and that young people may feel attracted, within the Church, to the beauty of the vocation to marriage.

In light of the changes that continue to impact families, I have decided to convene the presidents of the Episcopal Conferences from around the world in October 2026, in an effort 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.

I entrust this journey to the intercession of Saint Joseph, guardian of the Holy Family of Nazareth.

From the Vatican, 19 March 2026, Solemnity of Saint Joseph

LEO PP. XIV

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[1] Second Vatican Ecumenical Council Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World Gaudium et Spes, 52.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, Dogmatic Constitution on the Church Lumen Gentium , 11.

[4] Address Commemorating the 50th Anniversary of the Institution of the Synod of Bishops (17 October 2015).

[5] Homily at the Mass for the Jubilee of Youth (3 August 2025).

[6] Cf. Apostolic Exhortation Familiaris Consortio (22 November 1981), 17.

[7] Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, Dogmatic Constitution on the Church Lumen Gentium , 33.