The Vatican provided a brief glimpse inside its closed-door meeting on “Amoris Laetitia,” Pope Francis’ 2016 document on marriage and family, this afternoon in a press conference. The meeting’s first two days have focused on the “reality, beauty and challenges” of families today and on encouraging young people toward marriage.
On that first full day, according to Giacomo Costa, S.J., a consultor to the Vatican’s synod office who is responsible for the framework for the meeting, “human mobility and migration were mentioned by all the groups.”
The meeting’s discussions are held in language groups using the “conversations in the Spirit” method used at the Synod on Synodality. Each morning, the group begins in prayer and then hears testimonies from families whose identities are being kept confidential, then reflections from bishops and experts, some ordained and some lay, about the issues to be discussed that day. The roundtable discussions are summarized in a report from each group, which is read aloud when the meeting resumes in the late afternoon following a lunch break. Sometimes, individual interventions are also given in the afternoon. Each day ends with a prayer, with adjournment around 7:30 p.m.
At today’s press conference, Father Costa spoke at length on the meeting’s proceedings; the seven other speakers on the panel briefly introduced themselves and then were made available to reporters for individual interviews. Many of them did not provide information on what was discussed, as Pope Leo had asked them on the first night of the meeting to “preserve the discretion and confidentiality that this time of listening and discernment requires”—similar to Pope Francis’ request that Synod on Synodality participants “fast” from speaking to the media.
Speaking on the issue of migration, Father Costa said relocation “profoundly affects the way we live our family relationships: parents and children living in different countries; grandparents taking on the daily care of grandchildren; couples living apart for long periods.” It affects intergenerational relationships and how faith is transmitted, he said. “This certainly emerged from the accounts of many participants,” he added.
Father Costa explained that participants hoped to see a version of faith formation that would better prepare Catholics to live their faith in different countries and cultures. Some families, he said, lose their support networks when they move; some, “despite experiencing uprooting, retain the capacity for solidarity and hospitality that they learned in their homes.” Migration also leads, Father Costa said, to an increase in marriages between people of different faiths, and participants discussed the need for the church to better accompany Catholics who are married to non-Catholics.
Cardinal Filipe Neri Ferrão of Goa and Daman, India, who heads the Federation of Asian Bishops’ Conferences, addressed the meeting Thursday morning. He spoke to America following Father Costa’s press briefing.
Cardinal Ferrão described a man he knew whose family had been transformed radically by migration, living in “five worlds” over the course of his lifetime. The man’s grandfather lived in an extended family, which was once common in India but is becoming increasingly less so; his parents moved to a small apartment. The man then moved from his village to a city for work, and his son ended up moving abroad, also for work. The man said his grandchildren “speak to me only on video calls, and I have met them physically only once,” Cardinal Ferrão recalled.
This migration and separation pose unique challenges that the church in India and across Asia is working to mitigate. Cardinal Ferrão described how his diocese has worked to incorporate people who have moved there from northern India. Some, he said, have already become catechists and parish council members in their new parishes, but, he said, “we have a long way to go.”
In India, he said, dioceses are trying to build relationships with one another so that they can collaborate to welcome people moving from one diocese to another. “In the first few days, they need help to be incorporated. That’s one of the things we are trying to do,” he said, adding, “We are at the beginning.”
He also described an effort to build connections between local Catholics, new arrivals and vowed religious using “basic ecclesial communities” where neighbors meet once or twice a month to pray, read Scripture, discuss an issue “either related to their faith or a social issue” and have “fellowship.” This model is shifting now, he said, to “basic human communities” that follow a similar model but bring together neighbors of various religions who are bound by shared social issues.
To accompany families in particular, Cardinal Ferrão said, the job cannot be left only to priests and religious; they must also be accompanied by other families. The cardinal’s diocese has started another type of group, called “parish family cells,” in which “experienced families” accompany younger families, especially during the first years after marriage. (Ministry to couples in the early years of marriage is the planned topic for Saturday’s discussions.)
“That’s when they are adjusting to one another, their child comes, and there are their in-laws and their jobs. That’s the time when senior couples can share their experience,” the cardinal said. But scheduling can be a challenge for the groups because “today, people are busy, but we are trying.”
Father Costa mentioned several other issues affecting families aside from migration, including the role of technology in family settings (like keeping in touch over video calls or organizing screen-free family dinners) and the need for more robust marriage preparation. He said that many participants noted the “years and resources” devoted to the formation of priests and seminarians while pointing out that “for marriage, preparation is often a few weekends,” with little follow-up after the wedding. At the same time, he said, “lengthening the courses, as some participants proposed, does not solve the problem. Attention must also be paid to personalizing these journeys.”
All of these concerns, from migration to marriage prep, Father Costa said, touch on one recurring issue that was raised by Pope Leo XIV at the beginning of the meeting: “the experience of wanting to accompany people but not really knowing how to do it.”
“‘Accompaniment’ risks becoming a word on which we all agree, one that unites us on paper, while in practice we still need to clarify who accompanies people, with what preparation and how we respond to different situations,” Father Costa said.
“Everyone agrees,” Father Costa said, that families are meant to be leaders in the church’s mission, but what that looks like has yet to be worked out concretely. “Does it mean assigning them pastoral activities? Or does it mean recognizing their experience and creativity, and recognizing that they bear witness through their lives—that no one needs to give them a mission?”
Finally, there is the overarching question of how the church can make its message about the beauty of marriage seem desirable to overwhelmed young people. “Idealization can burden families with expectations they perceive as unattainable and can also frighten younger generations. So how do we present the beauty of marriage? How do we accompany people’s hopes? How do we inspire confidence in the possibility of loving?”
Many of those issues are wrapped up in the social problems that cause people to migrate and leave their families in the first place. Father Costa cited “work schedules that leave little time to be together, housing insecurity, families affected by war, violence against women [and] social pressures connected with dowries” among the issues raised by participants.
“Families today are subject to many pressures,” he said. “As a church, do we end up adding more through the demands we make?”
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