New College of Cardinals dean Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle presided over the closing Mass for the Vatican meeting on marriage and family yesterday, reading a homily written by Pope Leo XIV, saying, “The world has no future without strong families”. Source: NCR Online.
Pope Leo had been scheduled to preside over the closing Mass in St Peter’s Square himself before he shocked the world on Sunday with the announcement that he would be having surgery.
As a result, the morning Mass took place without Pope Leo.
Participants in the October 7-14 gathering of the world’s bishops’ conference presidents and the heads of Eastern Catholic churches marking the 10th anniversary of Pope Francis’ document on the family, Amoris Laetitia, prayed for Pope Leo’s recovery in the Prayer of the Faithful during the Mass and listened to the words that the Pope had prepared for them.
“The world has no future without strong families open to the gift of children and attentive to their education and growth,” Pope Leo wrote in his homily, which emphasised the important role of families in educating and forming the young in the virtues.
The Pope highlighted, quoting Amoris in part, that “the importance of the virtues, among which a special place is given to chastity, which is ‘invaluable for the genuine growth of love between persons’,” in preparing young people for true love in marriage.
“Marriage preparation programs conscientiously developed for this purpose in parishes and pastoral areas are commendable. Yet such courses alone are insufficient, for they must be preceded and supported by an education in love that accompanies a person’s growth from childhood,” he wrote.
Pope Leo highlighted Francis’ post-synodal apostolic exhortation that followed the Synod on the Family, saying that “marriage preparation begins at birth.”
“In this way, love lived within the family – with its moments of struggle, mistakes and failures, yet also with the marvel of its unpredictable, everyday life – becomes the first school of human affection, the first precious and irreplaceable apprenticeship in the ‘joy of love,’“ Pope Leo said.
Pope Leo said that “the values of openness to life and respect for life, from conception to natural death, are also rooted in this charity, which is fundamental to our existence and to our life together as human beings.”
“The family is the foremost guardian of these values, a beacon for the good of humanity,” he added.
Due to the personal request of the Pope prior to his surgery, the release of meeting’s final synthesis will be postponed, to enable the Pope to read it and offer his own comments.
FULL STORY
Cardinal Tagle reads Pope Leo’s homily to bishops: ‘The world has no future without strong families’ (By Courtney Mares, OSV News via NCR Online)
