(ZENIT News / Vatican City, 19.09.2025) – On Friday morning, September 19, in the Consistory Hall of the Apostolic Palace, Pope Leo XIV received in audience the participants in a meeting sponsored by the Latin American Episcopal Council (CELAM), the Pontifical Academy for Life, and the John Paul II Institute (September 19, 2025). The meeting focused on “Hopeful Discernment on the Future of Life and the Family.”
Below are the Pope’s words in English.
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In the Name of the Father, of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
Peace be with you.
Good morning. Please forgive me for arriving a little late. Thank you for your patience. We will only share a few moments, but it is a pleasure.
I am pleased to welcome you today to Peter’s home, the home of the Church where we should all feel like one big family gathered around the fire of his love. You have dialogued during these days following a synodal method, reflecting on some current issues that affect family life. Living synodality in the family requires «walking together,» sharing sorrows and joys, engaging in respectful and sincere dialogue among all its members, learning to listen to one another and reaching important family decisions for everyone.
Following this theme, and as our beloved Pope Francis would say, I propose three words to reflect on together: Jubilee, Hope, and Family.
In the Old Testament, Jubilee evokes a return: a return to the earth, to the original condition of free men, to the origins of God’s justice and mercy (cf. Leviticus 25). Today, we must understand this return as a call to return to the center of our lives, to God Himself, to the God of Jesus Christ. The Jubilee also invites us to reflect on our roots: to the faith received from our parents, to the persevering prayer of our grandmothers as they recited the beads of the Rosary, to their simple, humble, and honest lives that, like leaven, sustained so many families and communities. From them, we learned that Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life (cf. John 14:6). In Him, we find our true joy; the joy of knowing that we are at home, in the place where we belong.
The Jubilee of Hope is a journey toward the encounter with that Truth which is God Himself. At the beginning of His mission, Jesus describes this Jubilee as a year of grace (cf. Luke 4:19), and after the Resurrection, He calls the disciples to «return to Galilee» (cf. Matthew 28:10). We must not fall into the danger of basing our lives on human security and worldly expectations. In the social sphere, we could translate this temptation into the urge to «get by,» as the recently canonized Saint Peter Giorgio Frassati said (cf. Letter to Isidoro Bonini, February 27, 1925). We are also aware that today there are real threats to the dignity of the family, such as, for example, problems related to poverty, lack of work and access to health care, abuse of the most vulnerable, migration, and war (cf. Francis, Post Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Amoris Laetitia, 44-46). Public institutions and the Church have the responsibility to seek ways to promote dialogue and strengthen those elements in society that favour family life and the education of its members (cf. St. John Paul II, Encyclical Letter Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, 8).
In this context, we can understand the family as both a gift and a task. It is crucial to foster co-responsibility and the leadership of families in social, political, and cultural life, promoting their valuable contribution to the community. In every child, in every husband and wife, God entrusts us to His Son, to His Mother, as He did with Saint Joseph, to be, together with them, a foundation, leaven, and witness of God’s love among men. To be a domestic Church and a home where the fire of the Holy Spirit burns, spreading its warmth, contributing its gifts and experiences for the common good, and calling all to live in hope.
Saint Paul VI, in his famous homily in Nazareth, exhorted us to follow the example of the Holy Family, accompanying and supporting others in silence, work, and prayer, so that God may fulfill in them the plan of love He has reserved for them. This is the love that is embodied in every life born to the faith through Baptism and anointed «to proclaim this year of grace» to all, who will find Jesus in the Eucharist and in the Sacrament of Penance, who will follow Him in mission as a priest, as a Christian father, or as a consecrated person, until the definitive encounter, to the goal of our hope.
Dear brothers and sisters, the conclusion of this reflection must be a call to commitment and to that overflowing joy that filled the disciples upon encountering the Risen Jesus and led them to proclaim His name throughout the earth. Saint Augustine defined this «jubilation» as a rejoicing that cannot be expressed in words and that is proper, especially, to the Ineffable One (cf. Commentary on Psalm 94:3). May our families be that silent song of hope, capable of spreading the cross of Christ with their lives, «so that the joy of the Gospel» — quoting Pope Francis — «may reach to the ends of the earth and no periphery be deprived of its light» (Francis, Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium, 288).
I commend all of you to the intercession of the Holy Family of Nazareth, the perfect model that God offers as a response to the desperate cry for help of so many families. By imitating it, our homes will be living torches of God’s light. May the Lord bless you. Thank you very much.
The Lord be with you.
Blessed be the Name of the Lord.
May Almighty God bless you, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
Amen.
Thank you very much. Congratulations on the work done.
