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ROME -- Pope Leo XIV on Thursday summoned Catholic bishops to Rome for a special meeting on ministering to families that takes as its starting point Leo’s strong endorsement of one of Pope Francis’ most controversial policies on marriage and divorce.
Leo penned a special message marking the 10th anniversary of Francis’ 2016 document “The Joy of Love.” He called the text a “luminous message of hope” that is even more relevant and urgent today than it was a decade ago.
When it was released, “The Joy of Love” immediately sparked controversy because it opened the door to letting civilly remarried Catholics receive Communion.
Church teaching holds that unless these Catholics obtain an annulment — a church decree that their first marriage was invalid — they cannot receive the sacraments, since they are seen as living in sin and committing adultery.
Francis didn’t create a church-wide pass for these Catholics, but suggested — in vague terms and a strategically placed footnote — that bishops and priests could do so on a case-by-case basis after accompanying them on a spiritual journey of discernment. Subsequent comments and writings made clear Francis intended such wiggle room, part of his belief that God’s mercy extends in particular to sinners and that the Eucharist isn’t a prize for the perfect but nourishment for the weak.
The document became one of the most divisive of Francis’ pontificate and in many ways became the focal point of conservative opposition to his pontificate. It prompted a wave of criticism from mostly conservative Catholics, who said it had sown confusion among the faithful about the church’s teaching on the indissolubility of marriage.
But in his message Thursday marking the anniversary, Leo strongly endorsed Francis' text. He cited the Chapter VIII, which contained Francis’ opening on the divorce question, though he didn’t explicitly refer to access to the sacraments or Francis’ footnote No. 351.
In the text, Francis had told priests that they cannot merely apply moral laws to people in “irregular” situations. Rather, he said the church should help people who are in a technical state of sin, especially when there are mitigating factors at play.
In the related footnote No. 351, Francis elaborated that “in certain cases, this can include the help of the sacraments.” He told priests that “the confessional must not be a torture chamber, but rather an encounter with the Lord’s mercy” and that the Eucharist “is not a prize for the perfect, but a powerful medicine and nourishment for the weak.”
“On this tenth anniversary, we give thanks to the Lord for the stimulus that has encouraged reflection and pastoral conversion in the Church, and ask God for the courage to persevere on this path,” Leo wrote.
He summoned the presidents of bishops conferences to Rome for a meeting in October to decide next steps to minister to families today “in light of ‘The Joy of Love’ and taking into account what is currently being done in the local churches.”
Francis’ document sharply divided the church.
Within the first year of publication, four conservative cardinals formally asked Francis to clarify certain questions, or “dubia,” raised by the text. They argued church doctrine held that Catholics who remarried without a church annulment were living in sin and couldn’t receive the sacraments.
He never replied.
For a variety of reasons, such annulments often cannot be obtained though Francis issued a separate reform to simplify, facilitate and accelerate the process.
The following year, a petition of conservative Catholic theologians accused Francis of heresy.
But others embraced the text. Bishops from Francis’ native Buenos Aires issued a set of criteria to apply Chapter VIII that clearly allowed for civilly remarried Catholics to receive Communion, especially if the person in question isn’t responsible for the failed first marriage, while stressing it was not a free-for-all “as if any situation were to sufficiently justify it.”
Francis ordered the Argentine criteria published as an official act of the Vatican and wrote a letter to the bishops declaring their interpretation authoritative. “The document is excellent and clearly sets out the meaning of Chapter VIII,” he wrote. “There are no other interpretations.”
The Maltese church, for its part, issued its own set of guidelines that were published in the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano, in another indication of Holy See approval.
The Maltese guidelines say that if a Catholic in a new civil union believes, after a path of spiritual discernment searching for God’s will, that he or she can be at peace with God, “he or she cannot be precluded from participating in the sacraments of Reconciliation and the Eucharist.”
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