Pope Leo homily: no future without strong families

He walked the bishops through Saint Paul's hymn to love in First Corinthians, the same chapter Amoris Laetitia uses to meditate on Christian marriage. Marriage, he said, is an affective, spiritual and sacrificial union and an icon of God's love. Spouses grow together day by day in the image of the Trinity. The true joy of love is a gradual deepening of union.

Leo then turned to young people. He said the Church must teach the importance of the virtues when it prepares them for marriage, and he gave chastity a special place. Quoting Amoris Laetitia, he called chastity invaluable for the genuine growth of love between persons.

Parish marriage courses are commendable, he wrote. They are not enough on their own. Education in love has to start much earlier. He repeated Francis's observation that learning to love someone does not happen automatically and cannot be taught in a workshop just before the wedding. For every couple, marriage preparation begins at birth. Everything a young person lives inside the family should help make that person capable of a full and definitive commitment.

Family as the first school

That is where Leo's most quoted sentence sits. Love lived in the family, with its struggles, mistakes and failures, and with the marvel of ordinary days, becomes the first school of human affection. It is the first precious and irreplaceable apprenticeship in the joy of love.

He asked the Church to recognise families who live that vocation without fanfare, sometimes with heroic fidelity. Through the witness of parents, children, grandparents, young people and the elderly, the Gospel reaches the world.

Leo pushed the same point into the Church's own life. He wanted a Church that is a family of families, using Francis's phrase. Young couples should feel encouraged as they start. Parents should find support in the hard work of raising children. Older people should be recognised as witnesses to wisdom even as their strength wanes. Those who are vulnerable or in crisis should be surrounded by affection and shielded from judgment and prejudice.

Life, children and prayer at home

The homily then tied family charity to the Church's teaching on life. The values of openness to life and respect for life, from conception to natural death, are rooted in that charity, Leo wrote. The family is the foremost guardian of those values and a beacon for the good of humanity.

He recalled Francis's warning that no union that is temporary or closed to the transmission of life can ensure the future of society. Then came the sentence OSV News put in its headline. The world has no future without strong families open to the gift of children and attentive to their education and growth.

Leo also mourned the collapse of household prayer in many places. Amoris Laetitia, he said, stresses family spirituality, prayer and Sunday Eucharist. Common prayer and the sacraments open hearts to God and take families places they cannot reach alone. He urged everyone to rediscover those practices.

Tagle, Patriarch Paul III Nona, and prayers for the Pope

Tagle told the square he was presiding by special mandate of Leo in order to manifest publicly the ecclesiastical communion the Pope had already granted to His Beatitude Paul III Nona, Patriarch of Baghdad of the Chaldeans. The Patriarch was present at the Mass.

Vatican News reported Tagle's words that a Patriarch's communion with the Successor of Peter is not a formality. It is a living reality drawn from Eucharistic communion. He assured the Chaldean faithful of the affection and prayers of the whole Catholic Church as they bear witness amid many adversities.

The Prayer of the Faithful included special petitions for Leo's recovery. A nun in the square held an image of the Pope while praying the rosary as Tagle celebrated, according to OSV News photographs from the Mass.

Tagle closed by entrusting families and the Church to the Holy Family of Nazareth, using the prayer Francis placed at the end of Amoris Laetitia. Holy Family of Nazareth, grant that our families too may be places of communion and prayer, authentic schools of the Gospel and small domestic churches.

The synthesis report held back

The meeting's synthesis report was due to be made public on 14 October. It was not. Jesuit Father Giacomo Costa, a consultant to the General Secretariat of the Synod, told OSV News that Leo personally asked for the release to be postponed. The Pope wanted to listen to the report and offer his own word on it himself.

That request came before the surgery. It means the bishops' week of work on Amoris Laetitia will wait for Leo's response rather than close without him.

Short health context

Leo, 71, underwent surgery at Rome's Gemelli Hospital on Tuesday 13 October. Doctors removed the lower lobe of his right lung. Histology confirmed adenocarcinoma. The Holy See Press Office said the first post-operative night passed calmly, blood tests and a chest X-ray showed a normal course, and the Pope began respiratory therapy, walked in his room and ate. Audiences remain cancelled through 20 October. The planned 6 to 17 November apostolic journey to Uruguay, Argentina and Peru is still on the official schedule, with no change announced.

For the fuller surgical timeline see our earlier pieces on Pope Leo's lung surgery success and the nodule surgery admission. Wednesday's story is the homily. The cancer diagnosis is the reason Tagle stood at the altar. It is not the lead.

US bishops watching from afar struck a pastoral note. Archbishop Paul Coakley, president of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, told Catholic News Service he was as surprised as anyone and asked Catholics not to lose hope in God's providence. Bishop Daniel Flores, the conference vice president, said Leo had shown himself a man of great faith putting himself in the hands of God in a simple and profound way.

The Mass ended where Amoris Laetitia ends, with Nazareth. Leo's written line about strong families open to children is now the public word from a Pope who could not say it aloud. The bishops heard it. The square heard it. The synthesis they wrote still waits for his reply.

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