Pope Leo XIV has invited 187 participants to a closed-door conference in Rome on Oct. 7-14 to assess how Pope Francis’s 2016 document ‘The Joy of Love’ has been implemented.
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Pope Leo XIV has invited church leaders to Rome next week for a closed-door conference focused on understanding how Pope Francis’s 2016 document ‘The Joy of Love’ has been incorporated into bishops’ local communities.
The weeklong meeting begins on Wednesday, Oct. 7, and runs through Oct. 14, with 187 participants expected to reflect on their experiences rather than on rewriting the document.
Vatican officials said on Friday that ‘The Joy of Love’ is not up for rewriting, amending or scrapping.
The Vatican briefing also said the gathering is not meant to judge the text but to assess where the Church stands following its publication.
Organizers said they cannot foresee what themes will emerge from the bishops’ reflections and experiences. Gabriella Gambino, the undersecretary in the Vatican’s family office organizing the meeting, said the conference is intended to reflect what participants take from implementation rather than to follow a prewritten final document.
The Rev. Giacomo Costa of the Vatican’s synod office said the Oct. 7-14 meeting is not a continuation of the synod on the family that led to Francis’s document, and added that organizers expect differences, disagreements, tensions and open questions to surface.
‘The Joy of Love’ became a flashpoint after its release, in part because it addressed how the Church can minister to families in the present day and because it opened a path for civilly remarried Catholics to receive Communion, a step that opponents said conflicted with established church teaching.
Church teaching holds that unless civilly remarried Catholics obtain an annulment, they cannot receive sacraments because they are considered to be living in sin and committing adultery.
Vatican officials said Francis did not create a church-wide pass for Communion, but suggested in the document that bishops and priests could consider options on a case-by-case basis after accompanying people on a spiritual journey of discernment.
Costa said a final summary is expected to be published following the conference.
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