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Pope Leo XIV has taken two occasions recently – one among EU lawmakers and another in a video message to a Brazil family conference – to underscore that “the family” is formed by a “marriage between a man and a woman.”
To the 16th National Symposium of the Families in Aparecida, Brazil, the Holy Father quoted, on May 30, Pope Pius XII’s 1939 encyclical Summi pontificatus.
“The Church teaches that the family is the ‘primary and essential cell of society,’” holding a status, then, that “must be protected and promoted,” he said.
“Called to proclaim God’s love in today’s world, this unique community of persons formed by a man and a woman, so united in love that they become ‘one flesh’ (Gen 2:24), only fully understands its identity when it looks to the Lord Jesus and the sacrifice He made of Himself on the cross for the sake of His Bride, the Church,” Leo continued, also citing the 1981 apostolic exhortation Familiaris consortio by Saint John Paul II.
Days earlier, on May 25, the pope had addressed members of the European Parliament’s Intergroup on Demography, whom he received along with other groups focused on the state of the family and demographic changes within the EU.
Almost immediately after welcoming the EU leaders, Leo turned their attention to the “many and complex” problems associated with “zero-growth demographics” – the lack of children replacing the current population.
“And children are the future!” he asserted.
Linking this sad state of affairs to the prevalence of abortion, the pope also lamented that the move by the “founding fathers of the EU institutions” to discard “Christian inspiration” has ultimately “led to a time of drastic sterility, not only because too many have been deprived of the right to be born, but also because there has been a failure to pass on the material and cultural tools that young people need to face the future.”
Leo further confronted the EU lawmakers:
[W]e are not infrequently faced with the contradictory claims of purportedly family-friendly policies, which simultaneously promote discrimination against motherhood, exalt abortion as a right, and undermine the very foundation of the desire to start a family.
Reminding his audience of the “fundamental dignity of all persons and the role of the family in society,” the Holy Father quoted Saint John Paul II who affirmed that the family is “the first and irreplaceable school of social life.”
The family, Leo added, “is founded on marriage between a man and a woman, a reality that unites the personal and public dimensions.”
Pope Leo’s remarks to the Brazil symposium and to the EU leaders come in the wake of the release of a report by a synod study group that was published by the Vatican and announced by Vatican News on May 5.
Appearing to cast Church teaching that marriage is between one man and one woman as “rigid, “controversial,” and not in keeping with modern times, the report drew outrage from faithful Catholics.
Following the report’s publication, two events unfolded, the first being an open letter to Cardinal Mario Grech, Secretary General of the Synod of Bishops, by the officers of the John Paul II Academy for Human Life and the Family, a worldwide group of scholars devoted to defending life and to the integrity of the family.
“On behalf of the John Paul II Academy for Human Life and the Family, we write to express our profound alarm” regarding the release of the report of Study Group No. 9, Academy President Dr. Thomas Ward, Vice-President Christine de Vollmer, Ed.D., and Treasurer Steven Mosher wrote to Grech, urging that the report “be withdrawn from consideration.”
Its content, the officers asserted, “touches the very integrity of the Catholic faith” in light of its insinuations “that the Holy Spirit may inspire doctrinal or moral responses contrary to the perennial teaching of the Church.”
Moreover, they denounced the study group’s suggestion that “Catholic moral doctrine should be adapted to prevailing cultural mores.”
The Academy officers further stated the report does not represent the deeply-held beliefs of the “majority of practising Catholics worldwide,” but “clearly emerges from ecclesial circles that, for decades, have sought a substantial revision of Catholic teaching on sexuality and family life.”
The report’s inclusion of two “testimonies” by homosexual men in same-sex unions who have been reported to be friends of LGBT activist priest Father James Martin, only reinforces “the persuasion that the final report is not the fruit of broad ecclesial discernment, but of an ideologically predetermined process,” the letter’s authors observed.
A second event following the release of the synod report was the Holy See Press Office’s announcement that Pope Leo telephoned the Coptic Orthodox Pope, His Holiness Tawadros II, on May 15, in yet a third attempt to overcome impediments to having dialogue and heal the estrangement between the churches.
As Catholic World News reported in March 2024, the Coptic Orthodox Church suspended theological talks with the Catholic Church, following the release of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith’s Fiducia Supplicans – its declaration on the pastoral meaning of blessings.
The day after the release of Fiducia Supplicans in December 2023, The New York Times published an article and a photo of one of the men who apparently provided testimony in the synod study group’s alarming report, alongside his “husband,” as both were being blessed by Martin.
“After consulting with the sister churches of the [Oriental] Orthodox family, it was decided to suspend the theological dialogue with the Catholic Church, reevaluate the results achieved by the dialogue from its beginning twenty years ago, and establish new standards and mechanisms for the dialogue to proceed in the future,” stated Pope Tawadros II’s Synod.
The Synod added that the Coptic Orthodox Church rejects homosexual relationships “because they violate the Holy Bible and the law by which God created man as male and female, and the Church considers any blessing of such relations, whatever its type, to be a blessing for sin, and this is unacceptable.”
According to the Holy See Press Office, in his call to Tawadros II, Pope Leo expressed his eagerness for unity, given an “[a]wareness of the shared responsibility for proclaiming the Gospel and promoting peace and reconciliation, especially in the greatly troubled Middle East.”
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