Pope opens extraordinary meeting on Amoris Laetitia, calls on prelates to speak with ‘evangelical freedom’

October 08, 2026

Pope Leo XIV opened the extraordinary meeting on the tenth anniversary of Amoris Laetitia and called upon participants to speak with “evangelical freedom” about “what has brought joy in our Churches, what has challenged us and what questions have emerged more clearly through experience.”

At the same time, Pope Leo called upon prelates to preserve “discretion and confidentiality.”

Pope Francis’s apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia (The Joy of Love) was devoted to love in the family. On March 19, Pope Leo issued a message for the document’s tenth anniversary and convoked the extraordinary assembly of the presidents of the world’s episcopal conferences and heads of the Eastern Catholic churches; the weeklong gathering began on October 7 and concludes on October 14. The Vatican released the preparatory document for the assembly in July.

In his opening address, which took place at 4:00 PM on October 7, Pope Leo said that “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,” the Pope continued. “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.”

Pope Leo said that “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,” he explained. “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.”

The Pontiff encouraged the presidents of the episcopal conferences and heads of the Eastern Catholic churches to address several questions “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?”
• “What kind of Church ... 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,” Pope Leo continued. “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,” he added.

At a press conference last week, Father Giacomo Costa, S.J., consultor of the General Secretariat of the Synod, said that the discussions during the October 7-14 meeting “will be compiled into a summary report of the journey undertaken. This is not a new Final Document replacing the Apostolic Exhortation, but a summary of what the Assembly has recognized through listening and discernment.”

“The summary report, whilst being a working document, will also be made public,” he added. “In any case, the work will not end with the report. The Presidents will be able to take what has emerged back to their respective Episcopal Conferences and, together with them, promote the appropriate steps in the various contexts.”

 

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Further information:

• Meeting of the Holy Father with the Heads of Eastern Churches and the Presidents of Episcopal Conferences on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of Amoris laetitia (Dicastery for Communication - Vatican Media, 10/7/26)
• Pope on Amoris laetitia: What Church do people meet when most fragile? (Vatican News, 10/7/26)
• Pope marks anniversary of Amoris Laetitia, convokes meeting of world’s episcopal conference presidents (CWN, 3/20/26)
• Vatican releases preparatory document for extraordinary meeting on Amoris Laetitia (CWN, 7/7/26)
• Press conference offers overview of extraordinary meeting on Amoris Laetitia (CWN, 10/3/26)