The Vatican today released a detailed program for the week-long meeting (Oct. 7-14) of the presidents of the world’s 115 Catholic bishops’ conferences and the heads of the 21 Eastern churches, convened by Pope Leo XIV, 10 years after the publication of Pope Francis’ post-synodal exhortation on the family, “Amoris Laetitia” (“The Joy of Love”). 

Announcing the meeting on March 19, the American-born pope asked the bishops to discern with him the steps needed “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.”

“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,” the pope said then.

[Top 10 takeaways from “Amoris Laetitia”]

Detailed information about this event, including the list of participants, was given at today’s Vatican press conference by Gabriela Gambino, the undersecretary of the Dicastery for the Laity, Family and Life; Orietta Rachele Grazioli, who teaches canon and comparative law of the family at the Pontifical John Paul II Institute for the Sciences of Marriage and the Family in Rome; and Giacomo Costa, S.J., consultor of the General Secretary of the Synod, who is responsible for the methodology of next week’s encounter.

Pope Leo and the various presenters have alluded to the many social, political and cultural changes that have happened since Pope Francis published “Amoris Laetitia” on March 19, 2016, impacting families worldwide. Among the primary challenges are the Covid-19 pandemic; the wars in Ukraine, Gaza and the Holy Land, Lebanon, Iran, Myanmar, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Sudan; the migration crisis; the Trump presidency; the rise of A.I.; growing inequality in the world; climate change; growing secularization in many places; religious persecution; and the decrease of vocations in the Western world. Many bishops who will be in attendance come from very difficult situations.

Some 248 bishops, five families representing each of the continents and a number of experts will participate in the meeting, Ms. Gambino said. The list published by the Vatican shows that, in addition to the presidents of the bishops’ conferences and the heads of the Oriental churches, Pope Leo has appointed 22 other cardinals and bishops to participate in the meeting. They include four Americans: Cardinals Blase Cupich, Robert McElroy and Joseph Tobin and Bishop Daniel Flores. Noteworthy among the other cardinals are Luis Antonio Tagle and Victor Manuel Fernandez (Vatican), Gerald Lacroix (Quebec), Jean-Claude Hollerich (Luxembourg), José Cobo Cano (Madrid), Pablo Virgilio David (Philippines), Protase Rugambwa (Tanzania) and Dogbo Ignace Bessi (Ivory Coast), as well as Bishop Joseph Dabrowski (Canada) and two bishops from mainland China: Joseph Huang Binghang and Matteo Zhen Xuebin. The meeting will take place behind closed doors.

Ms. Gambino recalled that Pope Leo called this meeting for bishops to listen to each other and summarize what has happened in their local churches during the 10 years since “Amoris Laetitia,” a text that “has oriented” their conferences’ work in a decade that has seen “rapid cultural and social transformations,” with differing pastoral realities in the different continents. The pope then wants the bishops to “discern together” what steps the Spirit is calling them to take in the years ahead to proclaim the Gospel to and with families.

During their five-yearly “ad limina” visits to the Holy See, she said, bishops “had expressed concern” about the difficulties they encountered in their pastoral ministry to families, the challenges families face in their daily lives and in the transmission of the faith. She noted, for example, that in Poland, marriages celebrated in church have decreased by 45 percent over the last five years, while in Australia, between 1970 and 2024, the number of church marriages decreased from 88 to 16 percent. She said the basic question facing this meeting is “how to renew with vigor the pastoral [ministry] and make families participate ever more in the life and mission of the church.”

Ms. Grazioli said the 10th anniversary of “Amoris Laetitia” was “an opportune” moment to see “the pastoral creativity born from the full text of ‘Amoris Laetitia,’ obviously in different ways in the different regions of the world.” She said “listen and discern” are two key words for this meeting as the bishops focus on the five main themes: “Families today: reality, beauty, challenges”; “Young people and the discovery of the vocation to marriage”; “Married life. The first years of marriage: a decisive time”; “In the difficulties of life: accompanying and supporting”; and “Christian families as subjects of the church’s mission.”

In his presentation, Father Costa said this meeting could be considered as “a kind of evaluation” assembly. He explained that “evaluation does not mean passing judgment on the text—whether to praise or criticize it—but rather learning from the experience gained since its publication, in order to recognize where the Holy Spirit is leading the church and what new steps He is asking us to take.” 

In the light of this understanding, Father Costa offered a clear explanation of what this meeting is aiming at: 

Ten years after the publication of “Amoris Laetitia”… it is not primarily a matter of commenting on the exhortation once again, but of re-examining a story: what ‘Amoris Laetitia’ has set in motion in the lives of the churches and families, what we have learned, the difficulties we have encountered, and the new questions that have arisen. Telling this story is already a way of understanding it: through the narrative, transformations, fruits, and questions emerge that a simple assessment of the text’s application might fail to see. Ten years later, the question is not what ‘Amoris Laetitia’ says, but what we have learned by trying to live it out.

He said that “the goal set forth by Pope Leo XIV is to proceed, through mutual listening, to a synodal discernment of the steps to be taken today to proclaim the Gospel with families.”

Methodology

Father Costa said the bishops and experts will share their diverse experiences and perspectives, and most of the time will be spent in the working groups, where they will use the “conversations in the Spirit” method, “alternating between speaking, listening and silence.”

Through three rounds in the groups, he said, “sharing each person’s experience, reflecting on what has been heard from others and jointly processing what has emerged—participants will seek to highlight points of convergence, as well as differences, tensions, open questions and possible steps to take. We will not seek to erase differences in order to reach a consensus: Even a better-understood divergence can be a fruit of listening. Each group will offer a brief report to the assembly, which will be taken up and explored further in the plenary dialogue.”

He said “the fruits of the five days” of work will be compiled into a synthesis report. He emphasized that “this is not a new final document replacing the apostolic exhortation but a summary of what the assembly has recognized through listening and discernment.” A commission, he said, which will include representatives of the assembly, “will verify that the text faithfully reflects what has emerged; the summary will then be discussed by the assembly itself before being entrusted to the Holy Father.” It is not clear what Pope Leo will do with it.

The bishops will take it back to their conferences or churches to open whatever new ways ahead are proposed. Press briefings will be held during the week, and the synthesis report will be made public.

It should be underlined that the meeting is a joint venture of the Dicastery for the Laity, Family and Life headed by the Irish American cardinal Kevin Farrell and the General Secretariat for the Synod led by the Maltese cardinal Mario Grech. Pope Leo will give an opening address on the afternoon of the first day, Oct. 7, and Helen Alford, O.P., the president of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, will offer a meditation to the assembly. Pope Leo is expected to attend the plenary sessions and will celebrate Mass in St. Peter’s Square on the morning of the closing day, Wednesday, Oct. 14.

America’s full coverage of “Amoris Laetitia.”

Gerard O’Connell is America’s senior Vatican correspondent and author of The Election of Pope Francis: An Inside Story of the Conclave That Changed History. He has been covering the Vatican since 1985.