Today in a message commemorating the 10th anniversary of Amoris Laetitia — Pope Francis’s apostolic exhortation on marriage and the family — Pope Leo announced a meeting of the presidents of the world’s bishops’ conferences to take place in Rome in October.
Describing his predecessor’s document as “a luminous message of hope regarding conjugal love and family life, which was the fruit of three years of synodal discernment enriched by the Jubilee Year of Mercy,” Leo said that he was convening the October meeting “in an effort to proceed, in mutual listening, to a synodal discernment on the steps to be taken in order to proclaim the Gospel to families today, in light of Amoris Laetitia and taking into account what is currently being done in the local Churches.”
This gathering will be only the second meeting of its kind. The February 21–24, 2019 Meeting on the Protection of Minors in the Church (popularly referred to as the “abuse summit”) was the first time a pope convened all presidents of the world’s episcopal conferences together in one place. At the time, there were 114 episcopal conferences worldwide, each represented by its president, forming the core of a global assembly that the Vatican itself described as unprecedented. The number of episcopal conferences has since increased to 115, following the 2021 erection of the Episcopal Conference of Central Asia, meaning the meeting this October will bring together a slightly larger global representation than its predecessor.
In 2019, Pope Francis also invited the heads of the Eastern Catholic Churches, along with the superiors general of major religious institutes, and senior officials of the Roman Curia. A small committee of senior prelates and curial officials served as organizers, including Cardinals Blase Cupich and Oswald Gracias, and Archbishop Charles Scicluna, with Fr. Federico Lombardi, SJ, serving as moderator. In total, the gathering included roughly 180–190 participants. Survivors and advocates also played a major role in the 2019 gathering. It remains to be seen who will organize and lead the October meeting. Cardinal Victor Manuel Fernandez, Prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF), has long been identified as one of the primary authors of Amoris Laetitia. Cardinal Kevin Farrell, who was installed as Prefect of the Dicastery for the Laity, Family and Life shortly after the promulgation of the document and has since helped oversee its implementation, may also figure prominently.
The focus on Amoris Laetitia recalls the deeply uneven reception of the exhortation across the global Church over the past decade. While many episcopal conferences moved to implement its pastoral vision, the document — especially its eighth chapter — met with sustained resistance in some quarters. That resistance was particularly evident in the United States, where some conservative Catholic commentators (including several bishops) debated whether its call for pastoral discernment could be reconciled with Catholic moral doctrine, especially regarding divorced and civilly remarried Catholics. One retired US prelate, Cardinal Raymond Burke, led the resistance to the document along with three other cardinals when they published a letter — the so-called “dubia” — challenging the document’s orthodoxy and attempting to set a trap for Pope Francis. The late pope told Philip Pullella of Reuters that “he had heard about the cardinals’ letter criticizing him ‘from the newspapers … a way of doing things that is, let’s say, not ecclesial.’” He opted not to dignify their protestations with a response.
That same tension was visible within the US Conference of Catholic Bishops. When the bishops approved their 2021 pastoral framework Called to the Joy of Love, Chapter Eight was effectively sidelined; a last-minute amendment by Cardinal Blase Cupich to add a footnote merely referencing the chapter number passed with only 52 percent of the bishops approving.
Archbishop Paul Coakley, president of the USCCB and thus the likely American delegate to the October meeting, has not been a leading public voice in the debates over Amoris Laetitia and does not appear to have issued diocesan guidelines implementing it. However, he is broadly aligned with the more conservative wing of the US hierarchy — a bloc that resisted the document’s most controversial provisions — and in 2018 publicly expressed support for Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, a central figure in opposition to Pope Francis. His participation in Rome this October will itself be a modest test of how far Leo’s pastoral mandate actually reaches within the American episcopate.
Leo’s explicit appeal to accompany, discern, and integrate fragility, and to move beyond a “reductive conception of the norm,” suggests that he is not interested in reopening old battles over Chapter Eight so much as pressing the Church to take up its pastoral vision more fully. The episcopal conference presidents arriving in Rome will include many whose local churches have quietly received Amoris Laetitia for years without controversy; their witness may shift the conversation away from the resistance that dominated Western media coverage and toward the lived experience of the Universal Church. Whether that shift reaches the US Church remains, for now, an open question.
Image: Pope Leo greets Cardinal Victor Manuel Fernandez. Vatican Media.
Mike Lewis is the founding managing editor of Where Peter Is. In addition to his work for the site, his writing has appeared in America Magazine, National Catholic Reporter, US Catholic, The Irish Catholic, Catholic Outlook, The Synodal Times, and other Catholic publications. He has been quoted in The Washington Post, Vanity Fair, The New York Post, and other mainstream outlets on Catholic affairs. He previously co-hosted the Field Hospital podcast with Jeannie Gaffigan and The Debrief podcast. Before founding Where Peter Is, he worked in communications at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and Catholic Climate Covenant. He is married with four children.
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